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THE MAGAZINE OF
WEILL CORNELL
MEDICAL COLLEGE AND
WEILL CORNELL
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
MEDICAL SCIENCES
Building
for the
Future
The transformative
leadership of
Dean Antonio Gotto
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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weillcornellmedicine
THE MAGAZINE OF
WEILL CORNELL
MEDICAL COLLEGE AND
WEILL CORNELL
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
MEDICAL SCIENCES
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
30
22
30 DISCOVERY CENTER
BETH SAULNIER
FEATURES
22 PASSING THE TORCH
BETH SAULNIER
At the end of December, Dean Antonio Gotto steps
down after a decade and a half of service. They’ve
been transformative years for Weill Cornell—physically, financially, academically, and scientifically.
During Gotto’s tenure, the Medical College has seen
an overhaul of its curriculum; record-setting
fundraising campaigns; a renaming in honor of
foremost benefactors Joan and Sanford Weill; the
establishment of the Qatar campus; and much
more. This fall, Gotto sat down for a conversation
with Weill Cornell Medicine, offering thoughts on
topics from his professional legacy to his fondness
for spy novels. “I would like to think that I have
helped make Weill Cornell a gentler, more collaborative place,” he says, “but also one that was transformed in its academic endeavors.”
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34
On an unseasonably warm and sunny day in early
November, Weill Cornell celebrated the dedication
of its $650 million medical sciences facility and
unveiled its name: the Belfer Research Building.
Named in honor of Robert and Renée Belfer in
recognition of their $100 million gift, the building
is the centerpiece of Weill Cornell’s $1.3 billion
Discoveries that Make a Difference Campaign and its
Research Leads to Cures Initiative. The 480,000square-foot facility, which has been under construction since spring 2010, is scheduled to open in
spring 2014. “Coupled with the brilliant scientists
already on staff and with additional ones being
recruited,” Robert Belfer said at the event, “the
building is certain to house discoveries that will
benefit my family, New Yorkers, and all mankind.”
34 CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
SHARON TREGASKIS
Microbiologist Carl Nathan, MD, has been fascinated by scientific discovery since he was a young
teenager working in the lab of an NYU pathologist.
Now, he’s marshalling a myriad of weapons—
including novel partnerships with industry—in the
ongoing battle against tuberculosis. It’s no easy
fight: Mycobacterium tuberculosis resides in one in
three people worldwide and causes another infection every second. The disease costs 1.8 million lives
per year—making it the third leading cause of premature death and the leading cause of death from a
curable infection.
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weillcornellmedicine
THE MAGAZINE OF WEILL CORNELL MEDICAL
COLLEGE AND WEILL CORNELL GRADUATE
SCHOOL OF MEDICAL SCIENCES
www.weill.cornell.edu
Published by the Office of Public Affairs
Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell
Graduate School of Medical Sciences
WEILL CORNELL SENIOR ADMINISTRATORS
Antonio M. Gotto Jr., MD, DPhil
The Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean,
Weill Cornell Medical College; Provost for
Medical Affairs, Cornell University
David P. Hajjar, PhD
Dean, Weill Cornell Graduate School of
Medical Sciences
Myrna Manners
Vice Provost for Public Affairs
Larry Schafer
Vice Provost for Development
WEILL CORNELL DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS
John Rodgers
WEILL CORNELL SENIOR MANAGER OF
PUBLICATIONS
18
Anna Sobkowski
WEILL CORNELL EDITORIAL COORDINATOR
Andria Lam
Weill Cornell Medicine is produced by the staff
of Cornell Alumni Magazine.
PUBLISHER
DEPARTMENTS
3 LIGHT BOX
Portrait of a partnership
Jim Roberts
EDITOR
Beth Saulnier
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Chris Furst
Adele Robinette
Sharon Tregaskis
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Tanis Furst
ART DIRECTOR
Stefanie Green
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
Lisa Banlaki Frank
ACCOUNTING MANAGER
Barbara Bennett
EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES
401 E. State St., Suite 301
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 272-8530; FAX (607) 272-8532
4 CAPITAL CAMPAIGN UPDATE
6 DEANS MESSAGES
Comments from Dean Gotto & Dean Hajjar
8 SCOPE
Meet Dean Glimcher. Plus: Welcoming the white coats, the
iPad revolution, Chervenak elected to IOM, intercampus
collaboration, $5.5 million NIH grant, the annual art show,
and Dean Gotto’s final “State of the Medical College”
address.
11 TALK OF THE GOWN
Walking tall. Plus: Studying the horrors of the Holocaust,
food-borne illness in Qatar, two tuneful docs, new hope for
infertile men, Muslim modesty and medicine, health IT,
and the latest prosthetic retina.
Cover photograph by
John Abbott
40 NOTEBOOK
News of Medical College alumni and Graduate School
alumni
47 IN MEMORIAM
Printed by The Lane Press, South Burlington, VT.
Copyright © 2011. Rights for republication of
all matter are reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
Alumni remembered
48 POST DOC
Food, fitness, fun
2
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
Weill Cornell Medicine (ISSN 15514455) is produced four times a year by
Cornell Alumni Magazine, 401 E. State
St., Suite 301, Ithaca, NY 14850-4400
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Light Box
Picture perfect: A portrait of
Sanford Weill and Dean
Gotto by artist Everett
Raymond Kinstler was
installed in the lobby of the
Weill Greenberg Center in
September 2009.
I
EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER
t is very difficult to write just a few words about how
much Tony Gotto means to my wife Joan and me. Most
importantly, Tony would be the first to say that he
would not be the person he is if it were not for the support of
his beautiful wife, Anita, and his terrific family. I wholeheartedly agree. It has been a pleasure getting to know them over the
last fifteen years. The Gotto family truly epitomizes class.
Weill Cornell has soared to new heights under Tony’s leadership. He and our great team have worked tirelessly to position Weill Cornell as a world-renowned institution for medical
education, medical research, and clinical care. As a result of
Tony’s vision and passion, Weill Cornell has raised more than
$2 billion; developed key partnerships around the globe in
Qatar, Tanzania, Turkey, Haiti, and Houston; strengthened ties
with Ithaca to enhance research, education, and patient care;
and forged a strong bond with NewYork-Presbyterian. I have
enjoyed each and every day working with Tony, and there is
no question he is one of the smartest people I have ever met. I
always like to tell people that they have the luxury of turning
to Google for answers to tough questions, while I just need to
turn to Gotto.
My partnership with Tony has been one of the special highlights of my life and something I will cherish forever. We have
traveled the world together, and I have seen firsthand the
respect and admiration that world leaders, as well as ordinary
people from all walks of life, have for him. I will never forget a
trip we took to visit our doctors at Weill Bugando Medical
Centre in Tanzania, and seeing Tony perform rounds before the
sun came up one morning. He examined a young girl who had
malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis—and to this day I still cannot
believe all of that could exist in one person’s body. Tony had
the ability to make this young girl smile, and he reminded
those of us with him that people become doctors to improve
lives. Tony has certainly followed this credo for the last fiftyfive years of his life.
The mark of a good leader is to leave something better off
than it was found. Tony has certainly done this and much
more. We all owe him and his family a deep debt of gratitude,
and we look forward with much anticipation to the exciting
days ahead for Weill Cornell.
Sandy Weill
Chairman, Board of Overseers
Tributes to Dean Gotto by other distinguished members of the Weill Cornell community begin on page 24.
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Deans Messages
The Best Is Yet
to Come
JOHN SAMPLES / WCMC-Q
I
t has been a profound honor to serve as dean of Weill Cornell
Medical College over the past fifteen years and to lead our institution into the twenty-first century. When we moved to New
York at the end of 1996, my wife, Anita, expected that we would
return to Houston to retire after I had completed a five-year term.
We could not have imagined that I would end up continuing as
dean for an additional ten years. It has been an adventure that we
Words of wisdom: Dean Antonio Gotto addresses the graduating
class at the 2010 commencement for Weill Cornell Medical
College in Qatar.
6
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
Antonio M. Gotto Jr., MD, DPhil,
Dean of the Medical College
have enjoyed every step of the way, and we are happy to have made
a home in New York.
This has been a period of dramatic transformation for the
Medical College, and I am extremely proud of all that we have
accomplished together. I have been very fortunate and blessed to
have the friendship and support of countless individuals from within the Weill Cornell community, at Cornell University in Ithaca,
and from our partnering institutions. These relationships have
greatly enriched my time as dean.
I am especially thankful to Joan and Sandy Weill, who allowed us
to rename the Medical College in their honor; to Hank and Corinne
Greenberg and the Starr Foundation; to Bob Appel, who is chairing
our current campaign; and to our Board of Overseers. At Ithaca, I
deeply appreciate the support of our University Board of Trustees,
under the successive leadership of Stephen Weiss, Harold Tanner, and
Pete Meinig, and of Cornell presidents Rawlings, Lehman, and
Skorton. It has been a true pleasure to work with Herb Pardes, former
president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, to strengthen
the Medical Center in keeping with our shared values. In addition, our
senior administration and department chairs at Weill Cornell, our faculty and staff, our students and alumni, and our many other generous
donors and friends have all contributed on multiple levels to the successes of the past decade and a half. For that I am very grateful.
Together we have improved student education by continually
modernizing our curriculum. Weill Cornell remains a national
leader in the recruitment of students underrepresented in medicine,
and increasing faculty diversity is a high priority. We have expanded our clinical services by opening our first ambulatory care facility,
the beautiful Weill Greenberg Center. We entered into a period of
great collaboration between the Medical College and NewYorkPresbyterian, with our Medical Center ranking as a preeminent site
for patient care in New York and in the nation. Numerous advances
in basic, clinical, and translational research have been made, and
top investigators have joined our faculty to launch new programs. I
am confident that the opening of the Belfer Research Building,
named in honor of our generous benefactors Renée and Bob, will
lead to even greater discoveries. Finally, Weill Cornell has vastly
expanded its reach, with new affiliations in New York City,
Houston, and Tanzania and a branch campus in Qatar. Our commitment to improving health around the world represents an
investment in our shared future.
Today’s medical students are able to help patients in ways that
we never dreamed about when I first entered medical school in the
Sixties. The past fifteen years have been an exciting time of growth
and transformation for Weill Cornell and for modern medicine, but
I believe the best is yet to come. After all is said and done, when we
sum up our careers and our lives, the things that really matter most
are our faith, our family, our friends, and our good name.
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The Power of Research Partnerships
I
n recent years, pharmaceutical companies
have begun to re-examine their model for
drug research and development, including
their relationships with universities. As the cost
of developing drugs continues to rise and the
flow of new products in the pipeline slows, the
biomedical industry is under pressure to find
more effective and efficient ways to bring promising therapeutic compounds and diagnostic
methods to market. In this new landscape, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as
medical device manufacturers, have turned to
academic medical centers in search of new ways
to collaborate. These partnerships are creating
new opportunities for us in the Graduate School
to advance health care through science.
Until recently, the traditional model for pharmaceutical companies was to acquire potential
drugs only in the late stages of development,
once chemical compounds had been shown in
an early clinical trial to be safe and effective.
Today, academic researchers and industry experts
are collaborating at earlier stages. As our faculty
members validate targets, they can partner with
industry experts. For example, there are new
interactions at Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic
Innovation, an initiative the Medical College
joined earlier this year. Pfizer has agreed to sponsor the research of two of our leading scientists:
Barbara Hempstead, MD, PhD, the O. Wayne
Isom Professor of Medicine, who is researching a
novel target with implications for the treatment
of acute coronary disease, and Katherine Hajjar,
MD, the Brine Family Professor of Cell and
Developmental Biology, who will be studying
new cellular targets to manage diabetic
retinopathies. Their work will be done in tandem
with Pfizer scientists who bring experience in the
use of therapeutic biologics, pharmacokinetics,
and toxicology to the table.
Other more recent collaborations extend
across our Tri-Institutional stem cell research
efforts with Memorial Sloan-Kettering and
Rockefeller University. And this issue of Weill
Cornell Medicine details the work of Carl Nathan,
MD, the R. A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology, who has pioneered models of collaboration with nonprofit organizations and industry,
David P. Hajjar, PhD,
Dean of the Graduate
School of Medical Sciences
JOHN ABBOTT
including pilot programs with GlaxoSmithKline, Lilly, and Sanofi-Aventis, to bring
to market drugs to treat tuberculosis and other
infectious diseases that, under the old model,
were sometimes neglected. There are many
other existing relationships with our professors
and industrial partners.
Caren Heller, MD, who oversees the development of new industry initiatives at the medical
school, recently attended an open house hosted
by a global biopharmaceutical company. At the
event, representatives emphasized that this particular company is open to collaborations with
academic researchers at any stage. As understanding of human biology has deepened, they
said, academic researchers offer industry much
greater scope. The firm cannot cover every area
of medical research—but if it collaborates with
academic medical centers, it can put smaller bets
in a wider range of areas.
Those bets could pay off with enormous
advances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Our research scientists welcome new and
creative collaborations, as we continue our
efforts to translate basic science into clinical outcomes that improve health care for all.
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Scope
News Briefs
A
Physician-Scientist Named Dean
fter an extensive search that yielded
dozens of highly qualified candidates, Weill Cornell has chosen a
nationally renowned immunologist
and translational medicine pioneer as its next
dean. As of January 1, physician-scientist Laurie
Glimcher, MD, will serve as Cornell University
provost for medical affairs and the Stephen and
Suzanne Weiss Dean of the Medical College.
In announcing Glimcher’s hiring in early
September, Cornell President David Skorton, MD,
called her the ideal choice to lead the institution as
it expands its biomedical research enterprise—citing the construction of the new Belfer Research
Building and the near-completion of the $1.3 billion Discoveries that Make a Difference Campaign. “I
am honored and delighted that Dr. Glimcher has
accepted the challenge of guiding our great institution,” Skorton said. “Her passion for accomplishment and her many research and clinical strengths
Laurie Glimcher, MD
make her ideally suited to build on Tony Gotto’s
strong foundation and lead Weill Cornell’s bright
JOHN ABBOTT
future in clinical care, education, and translational
Academy of Sciences. A past president of the American Association
research as well as participate at the highest level of Cornell
of Immunologists, she has been elected to numerous professional
University in fostering excellence in the life sciences.”
societies including the American Association for the Advancement
Glimcher graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1972 and
of Science. She has authored more than 350 scientific articles and
earned her MD cum laude from Harvard Medical School. She went
chapters, publishing in leading journals such as Science and Nature.
on to join the Harvard faculty, becoming the Irene Heinz Given
At Harvard, her lab used biochemical and genetic approaches to
Professor of Immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health,
elucidate the molecular pathways that regulate lymphocyte develwhere she directed the Division of Biological Sciences, and profesopment and activation in the immune system—work that could
sor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she headed one
lead to treatment of autoimmune, infectious, allergic, and maligof the world’s leading immunology programs. Her research lab is
nant diseases. One of her publications, a landmark paper in Cell on
credited with myriad discoveries including the T-bet transcription
the T-bet transcription factor, has been cited more than 1,100 times.
factor, which regulates immune functions, and the Schnurri-3
Glimcher has pledged to continue Weill Cornell’s efforts to
adapter protein, which controls adult bone mass. Board certified in
increase faculty excellence and strengthen research ties to the
internal medicine and rheumatology, Glimcher is known as a pioIthaca campus, while tapping her experience in working with the
neer in partnering with the private sector; she is the longest-standing
private sector to foster partnerships with industry. “I am convinced
member of the board of directors of the biopharmaceutical compathat Weill Cornell Medical College is perfectly positioned, thanks to
ny Bristol-Myers Squibb.
the great work of Tony Gotto, Sandy Weill, and the Board of
“This is great news for the medical school and for the city,” said
Overseers, to be a leader in academic medicine in this country,”
Board of Overseers Chairman Sanford Weill. “With her thorough
Glimcher said. “I have a clear vision for how that can happen, but
appreciation of the management and financial challenges of comI also am excited that the president of Cornell—David Skorton,
plex organizations, I am confident she will lead the college with the
who is a physician-scientist—the Board of Overseers and the
same creativity and acumen she demonstrated when she pioneered
WCMC faculty will work with me to shape that vision. I also look
the establishment of Bristol-Myers’s science and technology commitforward to leveraging the enormous strengths in life sciences, the
tee, which is widely credited for transforming its stake in research.”
physical sciences, and engineering at Cornell University’s Ithaca
Glimcher is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
campus to raise the bar even higher across the university.”
Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National
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Dean Gotto Gives Final State
of the College Address
Speaking to a standing-room-only audience in Uris Auditorium in late November, outgoing dean Antonio Gotto used
his final State of the Medical College address to reflect on his
fifteen years in office. Gotto went on to detail Weill Cornell’s
growth and progress in a number of arenas, including student admissions, clinical care, biomedical research, and
fundraising. He noted that Weill Cornell’s endowment has
quadrupled to $1.1 billion, including $45 million endowed
for scholarships, and that the Medical College created 122
new faculty endowments, including commitments for sixtyfour professorships and forty-six clinical, education, and
research scholars. He also outlined positive trends in student
recruitment—the mean science GPA for the Class of 2015 is 3.77,
tied for highest in Medical College history—and in the number of
faculty and staff, which has grown from some 3,000 in 1997 to more
than 5,600 today.
At the event, Graduate School Dean David Hajjar presented
Gotto with a plaque in his honor; it included the line, “No greater
devotion has been exemplified by any provost or dean in the history of this institution.”
Student iPad Tablets Mark Shift to Digital
WCMC
White-coat welcome: The 103 aspiring doctors of the Class of
2015 donned the traditional garb of the medical student at the
August ceremony marking the beginning of their studies.
Chervenak Elected to Institute of Medicine
Frank Chervenak, MD, the Given Foundation Professor and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been
elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies—one
of the highest honors in health and medicine. Chervenak has published more than 260 peer-reviewed papers and co-authored or coedited twenty-eight textbooks on topics including ultrasound and
ethics in ob/gyn. He currently serves as president of the
International Society of the Fetus as a Patient and of the World
Association of Perinatal Medicine, among other leadership positions.
As of fall semester, instead of receiving printed course notes and
texts, all first- and second-year students have been given an iPad
2—making Weill Cornell one of the first medical colleges to make
the leap from paper to digital. In addition to sparing students the
burden of hauling heavy texts, the tablets will allow them to download course materials, submit electronic course
evaluations, access their grades, collaborate
TIP OF THE CAP TO. . .
with other students, and save their notes and
coursework. Jason Korenkiewicz, director of
educational computing, noted that “the iPad is
also a green alternative, saving about 2 million
Phyllis August, MD, the Ralph A. Baer
pages and copies without being any more
Professor of Medical Research, and
expensive.”
ob/gyn professor Daniel Skupski, MD,
On the iPad, students can view 3-D molecnamed Outstanding Physicians for
ular models rather than flat photos on a page;
Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy
images being discussed during training, such as
by the Preeclampsia Foundation.
views through a scope, can be transmitted
wirelessly to all the tablets in the room. In the
Charles Bardes, MD, associate dean of
future, they could be synched with electronic
admissions and professor of clinical
medical record systems during student clerkmedicine, winner of the Siegel Family
ships. According to Vinay Patel ’14, who was
Faculty Award, which recognizes a
part of a pilot group that tested the device last
Weill Cornell professor who demonspring, some students were initially apprehenstrates excellence in teaching and
sive about shifting away from paper—but overresearch.
all, he says, “the response has been extremely
positive.” The iPad initiative echoes the curAndrew Dannenberg, MD, director of
rent trend toward electronic record-keeping,
the Weill Cornell Cancer Center and
which will be the standard in students’ future
the Henry R. Erle, MD–Roberts Family
practice. Says Patel, “With an iPad, it will be
Professor of Medicine, winner of an
easy to keep personal and patient records
award for excellence in cancer prevenupdated in real-time as you’re meeting with
tion research from the American
the patient, checking reference information,
Association for Cancer Research.
and even looking up body-scan images on the
fly, while making rounds.”
Joseph Fins, MD ’86, the E. William
Davis Jr., MD, Professor of Medical
Ethics, installed as president of the
American Society for Bioethics and
Humanities.
Incoming Medical College dean Laurie
Glimcher, MD, given honorary lifetime
membership in the International Cytokine Society, the group’s highest honor.
Dermatologist Marie Jhin, MD ’94,
winner of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Award from Asian Women in
Business.
Michael Stewart, MD, chairman of the
Department of Otolaryngology–Head
and Neck Surgery and the E. Darracott
Vaughan Jr., MD, Senior Associate
Dean for Clinical Affairs, appointed
editor-in-chief of the Laryngoscope.
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LINDSAY FRANCE / CORNELL UP
Panel Touts Intercampus Collaborations
In October, biomedical sciences professor Robin Davisson, PhD—
who holds appointments at both Weill Cornell and Ithaca—moderated a panel discussion on the benefits of collaborations between
the two campuses. Speakers at the event, held in Ithaca during the
Trustee-Council Annual Meeting, included two Veterinary College
professors—Paula Cohen, PhD, associate professor of biomedical sciences and director of Cornell’s intercampus Center for Reproductive
Genetics, and molecular microbiologist David Russell, PhD—as well
as Weill Cornell’s Anne Moscona, MD, professor of pediatrics and of
microbiology and immunology and vice chair for research of pediatrics. The panelists discussed their collaborative efforts, including
Moscona’s work with veterinary researchers to study viral infections
in dogs and cats—which could shed light on how an animal virus
can adapt to infect humans. Efforts to promote cooperation
between the two campuses have been stepped up in recent years,
with initiatives including startup grant funding for collaborative
projects and the establishment of a direct bus service offering work
space, wifi, and power for electronic devices.
FROM THE BENCH
$5.5 million NIH Grant for
Spina Bifida Research
Weill Cornell researchers have received a five-year,
$5.5 million Transformative Research Project
(T-R01) Award from the NIH to fund investigations
into risk factors for spina bifida and related congenital defects in which an area of a baby’s spine
or brain is not fully enclosed. The project will be
led by Margaret Ross, MD ’79, PhD ’82, director of
the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Development
and professor and vice chair for research in the
Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, and
Christopher Mason, PhD, an assistant professor of
computational genomics in the Department of
Physiology and Biophysics. In collaboration with a
colleague at the University of Texas, Austin, they
aim to identify which genes are modified by folic
acid levels and how those patterns can be used to
assess risk for having a child with spina bifida or
other serious neural tube defects.
Varicoceles Linked to Lower
Testosterone
In the journal BJU International, Weill Cornell
physician-scientists report that varicoceles, masses
of enlarged and dilated veins in the testicles long
known to cause infertility, also interfere with
testosterone production. Along with low energy,
decreased muscle strength, and sexual problems,
says urologist Marc Goldstein, MD, the Matthew P.
Hardy Distinguished Professor of Reproductive
Medicine, low testosterone is a major risk factor for
osteoporosis and can cause cognitive and psychological issues such as depression. However, the
10
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
Working together: The panel discussion, held in Ithaca and
moderated by Robin Davisson, PhD (far right), included Weill
Cornell researcher Anne Moscona, MD (center).
researchers found that microsurgery can increase
testosterone levels in 70 percent of patients.
Lessons from COURAGE Trial
Rarely Applied
systems and access to HIV prevention, testing, and
treatment services,” says Laith Abu-Raddad, PhD,
an assistant professor of public health at WCMC-Q.
“We need to be ahead of the epidemic, not trailing
behind it and wishing we had acted earlier.”
In a review of nearly 500,000 cardiac cases nationwide, researchers at NYP/Weill Cornell found that the
lessons learned from a major, widely publicized
study are not being well implemented. Despite the
findings of the Clinical Outcomes Utilizing
Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation
(COURAGE) trial—that patients should receive a
combination of common cardiac drugs such as
aspirin and a beta blocker before and after stenting—the researchers reported in JAMA that the
number of patients receiving the optimal therapy
had increased by less than 3 percent. Says cardiologist William Borden, MD, the Nanette Laitman
Clinical Scholar in Public Health: “This snapshot of
what is happening in the real world should be a call
for physicians, as well as policymakers, to look at
how patient care can be improved.”
‘Spinach’ Sheds Light on RNA
HIV Emerging in Middle East
Protein Plays a Vital Role in
Lung Regeneration
HIV infection levels have been steadily rising
among men who have sex with men in several
countries in the Middle East and North Africa,
including Egypt, Sudan, and Tunisia. In a study
published in PLoS, researchers found that transmission of the virus via anal sex among men was
responsible for more than a quarter of reported HIV
cases in many countries in the region. The men
studied were also shown to engage in several types
of high-risk behavior including minimal condom
usage. “There is no escaping that countries in the
region need to massively expand HIV surveillance
Researchers have developed a fluorescent tool that
can track the ways in which RNA both sustains
human life and contributes to disease. The tool, a
green fluorescent protein dubbed “Spinach,” tags
cellular RNA, allowing researchers to track it—and
gain a deeper understanding of its still-mysterious
role. “Scientists used to think that RNA’s function
was limited to making proteins and that these proteins alone dictated everything that happened in
cells,” says Samie Jaffrey, MD, PhD, an associate
professor of pharmacology and the study’s senior
author. “But now we are understanding that cells
contain many different forms of RNA—and some
RNAs influence cell signaling and gene expression
without ever being used for synthesizing proteins.”
A protein known as MMP14 may be crucial for the
production of new lung alveoli, the tiny sacs where
oxygen exchange takes place. In a study published
in Cell, researchers led by Shahin Rafii, MD, the
Arthur B. Belfer Professor of Genetic Medicine and
co-director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute, have
identified endothelial cells that trigger lung regeneration in mice. The findings may eventually point
to a way to induce regeneration in patients with
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD),
which currently has no effective therapy.
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Talk of
the Gown
A Leg Up
Insights & Viewpoints
Orthopaedic surgeon S. Robert Rozbruch, MD ’90, is a
leader in a burgeoning field devoted to lengthening
N
ancy Napurski was twentyfive and on a climbing date
in the Connecticut Traprocks
when the accident happened. Though a
novice, she was leading the climb; during
the hardest part of the ascent, she somehow lost her grip. “I learned much later
that when you fall, you’re supposed to be
like Spider-Man and hang onto the cliff as
tight as you can, but I jumped away from
it,” recalls Napurski, now fifty. “I swung
back, and the impact was taken by my left
ankle. It dislocated and I was hanging by
my rope, terrified and screaming.”
Luckily, two teenagers were being
trained in mountain rescue nearby; their
instructor came to Napurski’s aid and
supervised her removal via litter, since
there was nowhere to land a
PROVIDED
helicopter. She was eventually moved to a hospital in
Westchester, where she had
surgery. “The next morning,
my surgeon said I had a 50
percent chance of walking
normally,” she says. “At the
time I was playing competitive volleyball, I had been a
gymnast, I skied. I was so
active, and the news was
frightening.”
Napurski eventually resumed normal walking. But
over the next two decades
she developed painful bone
spurs and other complications—including an equinus
deformity that required walking on the ball
of her foot. Ankle surgery didn’t solve her
problems; she was forced to wear either an
orthotic insert or high heels. She made the
best of it by throwing herself into competitive swing dancing. She earned a bachelor’s
degree, began a career in public relations,
and eventually moved to Upstate New York
to be with her fiancé. By her late forties, she
stunted limbs and repairing old injuries
PROVIDED BY NANCY NAPURSKI
Climb every mountain: Nancy Napurski climbs Breakneck Ridge in the Hudson Valley after
her ankle was repaired by surgeon S. Robert Rozbruch, MD ’90 (left).
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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Talk of the Gown
who had had a fracture as a child;
they’re walking around with a leg
that’s crooked and short, and
they’ve been told by doctors over
the years that there’s nothing that
can be done, they just have to live
with it. And then they find out
that it can be repaired; we can
straighten the leg, lengthen it, and
make it normal. The emotion that
people display is fabulous.”
The field’s progenitor was
Gavriil Ilizarov, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon in the Siberian city
of Kurgan who developed fixators—which the patients could
adjust themselves—to treat poorly
healed war wounds, using the basic
physiological principle that compression facilitates bone healing.
“The story goes that he went away
for two weeks and left instructions
HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY
on how to adjust the frame, but
the patient turned it the wrong
Attitude adjustment: Napurski’s artist husband
way,” explains Rozbruch. “When
decorated her fixator so strangers would be less
he came back two weeks later and
frightened of the device.
took an X-ray, he found the bone
was pulled apart—was ‘distracted’—yet there was new bone growing in
was facing the daunting prospect of having
the gap. That was the beginning of the
the joint fused when she heard about a prothought that you could regenerate bone
gram at Hospital for Special Surgery that
with distraction—and that led to the
might offer hope.
whole idea of limb lengthening.”
Enter S. Robert Rozbruch, MD ’90, an
During the Cold War, Ilizarov’s techassociate professor of clinical orthopaedic
nique didn’t get much exposure in the
surgery at Weill Cornell. Rozbruch is a pioWest; it made its way to Italy in the
neer in the nascent specialty of limb
Eighties, and the first such procedure was
lengthening and complex reconstruction.
performed in the U.S. in 1988. Rozbruch
Based on techniques developed in Russia
became interested in the field after comafter World War II, the field aims to correct
pleting his orthopaedic training in the midthe lingering effects of orthopaedic trauma,
Nineties; he took a sabbatical from HSS in
from shortened limbs due to childhood
1999 to study the technique at the only
growth-plate injury to the complications of
facility, at the time, with a dedicated limb
poorly healed fractures or postsurgical
lengthening service: Sinai Hospital in
infection. Using external fixators—scaffolds
Baltimore. HSS launched its own program
that surround the limb and require tiny
in 2000; it became a dedicated service in
daily adjustments to pins inserted through
2005, with Rozbruch as chief. In addition
the skin—Rozbruch and his colleagues are
to post-trauma repair, he and his team treat
able to replace bone, add inches to arms
patients with conditions such as dwarfism
and legs, and restore function almost to
and children with limb discrepancies and
pre-injury levels. “This is life-changing for
deformities related to birth defects and
people—that’s part of what’s so exciting for
trauma. They also conduct research on a
me,” says Rozbruch, president-elect of the
variety of topics, including the develophundred-member Limb Lengthening and
ment of internal fixators and the basic sciReconstruction Society. “You see an adult
12
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
ence of bone healing. “We’re a dynamic
group,” he says “We’re asking questions
and doing research. We’re training fellows,
med students, and residents. It’s an exciting
field and this is an exciting time.”
Napurski had her surgery in July
2009—timing it, in part, so she could avoid
the slippery sidewalks of a Rochester winter
while sporting the fixator. During the procedure, Rozbruch used a technique called
ankle distraction, separating the joint and
injecting stem cells taken from her hip to
promote re-growth of cartilage. “The day
after, the pain was terrible,” she recalls. “I
had a morphine drip, and it was appropriate. When I had to unlock the fixator and
move my joints, I made sure that I was on
codeine, but otherwise I was able to manage my pain with Tylenol. Some days were
better than others.”
She wore the fixator for twelve weeks,
cleaning the pin sites and making adjustments several times daily. “One interesting
thing I found is that the fixator scared
people,” she recalls. “It’s not that scary
when you have it on. But when strangers
saw it, it made them afraid.” Her husband
is an artist, and he decorated the fixator
with whimsical trappings like colorful
pipe-cleaners and a clown head. “Suddenly people were attracted to it—they would
smile at it and compliment me on my
mobile sculpture,” she says. “It was a completely different experience.”
For Napurski, the procedure was a
resounding success. As Rozbruch promised, she was “shoe to shoe” in nine
months—walking in normal footwear by
the following March. While she occasionally gets stiff if she’s been on her feet all
day, it’s nothing that can’t be handled
with ibuprofen. “I’ve had such a miraculous recovery,” says Napurski, whose testimonial is one of many on the service’s
website. “I can stand flat-footed—I hadn’t
been able to do that for twenty years. I can
balance on one foot at a time. I can walk
in heels, flip-flops, and sneakers without
any problem. When people see my story
online, they often ask, ‘Is it really painful
to have the fixator on?’ I tell them, ‘It’s
not any more painful than when you
broke your leg in the first place.’ ”
— Beth Saulnier
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Bearing Witness
An ethics fellowship brings a student to Auschwitz
to confront medicine’s role in the Holocaust
STEPHANIE PURISCH
Sacred space: At Auschwitz, Stephanie Purisch ’12 and the other fellows visited the
infamous gates proclaiming that “work makes you free.” Below: Purisch at the Berlin Wall.
I
n the research room of Berlin’s House
of the Wannsee Conference, fourthyear medical student Stephanie
Purisch felt a sense of dread creeping
over her as she read documents
detailing the crimes of Nazi doctors complicit in the Final Solution. She felt it again,
profoundly, on a strangely cold and overcast day in July as she toured the grounds
and buildings of Auschwitz-Birkenau,
where those atrocities were carried out. The
unseasonable weather seemed part of the
place, she says, as if that vast campus of
death were forever under an evil pall.
Purisch was one of fifty students chosen by the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the
Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) for a
two-week program of profound instruction.
Founded in 2010, the fellowship uses the
Holocaust as a framework for exploring the
responsibilities of professionals to maintain
ethical standards even in the face of war,
social unrest, and personal risk. About a
dozen students were chosen from each of
four fields: medicine, law, journalism, and
religion. This past summer, the 2011 FASPE
fellows attended workshops, lectures, and seminars in New York, Berlin,
and Poland. “As physicians we’re in a powerful
position; people put their
lives in our hands and
depend on what we say
and do,” she says. “The
fellowship has definitely
helped solidify my commitment to treating my
patients as individuals, to
making every effort to
learn about who they are.”
FASPE is designed to use the history of
the Holocaust—when doctors, lawyers,
journalists, and even religious leaders collaborated with Nazi authorities to commit
systematic crimes against humanity—as a
framework for an exploration of contemporary ethics. Purisch studied such issues
as the complicity of physicians in establishing and carrying out Nazi policies; the
relationship between state authority and
medicine; and the role and limits of con-
temporary bioethics, including physicianassisted suicide. The fellowship’s ultimate
goal is to make students aware of the ethical challenges that they will confront in
their working lives.
That possibility seems remote to
Purisch, a Maryland native and frequent
volunteer at Weill Cornell’s Community
Clinic who plans to specialize in obstetrics
and gynocology. But she is well aware that
ethics are a vital part of medicine—and
that she may face hurdles she can scarcely
imagine. “Ob/gyn is an emotionally and
ethically charged field,” she says. “As a
doctor I will have obligations to a pregnant mother, a fetus—life itself. I know
there will be difficult cases that will test
my ability to do the right thing for my
patients in life-and-death situations.”
Purisch lauds the medical training she
has had so far and says she’s gratified that
advocating for patients seems to come naturally to her. But nothing could have prepared her for what she learned about Nazi
doctors who performed brutal experiments
on prisoners and ushered helpless victims to
the gas chamber, lying to
them all the way. “I’m
Jewish and have extended
family who survived the
camps, and I thought I knew
a lot about the Holocaust,”
she says. “But the idea that
doctors were so deeply
involved in conceiving and
orchestrating the Final Solution was new to me.”
It is estimated that at
least 350 German physicians—and probably hundreds more—participated in
the killing of millions of people under the
concept of lebensunwertes Leben, “life unworthy of life.” The genocide began with the
idea of purifying the Aryan race through
coercive sterilization. It was followed by the
killing of “impaired” children, then adults
in mental hospitals. In Auschwitz-Birkenau
alone, an estimated 1.1 million people perished, 90 percent of them Jews.
Purisch was sickened to learn how doctors—people sworn to do no harm—sterilSPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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Talk of the Gown
ized female prisoners by injecting chemicals into their uteruses and exposing them
to massive levels of X-rays. At the
Auschwitz-Birkenau museum she read
how the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, the
“Angel of Death,” performed brutal experiments on sets of twins, including killing
one with induced diseases and then executing the other and performing comparative autopsies. These and other ghastly
details—including clinical notes written in
Mengele’s own hand—stunned Purisch.
She could not fathom how anyone, least
of all medical professionals, could do such
things. “We’re at a very idealistic phase of
our training, and it just over whelmed
me,” she says. “Doctors not much older
than we are committed murder and provided a so-called ‘calming presence’ for
prisoners as they were escorted to their
deaths. They were at each and every point
in the chain of command at the death
camps. How could that happen?”
The twelve-day FASPE program began
with a visit to the Museum of Jewish
Heritage in New York, where fellows
explored exhibits and met with scholars
and Holocaust survivors. Next stop: Berlin,
where workshops were held at the House
of the Wannsee Conference, the chateau
where Nazi officials planned the Final
Solution. The fellows then traveled to
Oswiecim, Poland—the town the Germans
called Auschwitz—where they toured
Auschwitz-Birkenau and worked with the
education staff at its museum. In Krakow,
they met with a Righteous Among the
Nations rescuer, one of the last surviving
people who risked their lives to save Jews
from the Nazis, and attended sessions at
Jagiellonian University on contemporary
ethical issues facing their professions.
Purisch notes that the fellowship is not
meant to numb by over-exposure to horror; the goal is heightened awareness and
sensitivity. To that end, she joined in troubling discussions on a question no one
wants to confront: what if she found herself in a situation where resistance to evil
meant imprisonment, torture, or death?
“It’s hard to imagine—very hard,” says
Purisch, who followed up the FASPE fellowship with a final project examining the
“dehumanization” of the Jews and other
Holocaust victims by the Nazi regime. “It’s
easy to say that we would never betray our
commitment, but the real truth is that no
one knows. The best we can do is be prepared to act in the interest of life.”
— Franklin Crawford
14
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
Dietary Detectives
Researchers in Doha and Ithaca team up to
study food-borne illness in Qatar
Q
atar is seeing an era of remarkable growth. Between the 2004 and 2010 censuses, its population rose from about 775,000 to 1.7 million, mainly due to
an influx of expatriate workers from around the globe. The nation is taking
an increasing role on the world stage, is hosting the FIFA World Cup soccer competition in
2022, and is in the running to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Under a three-year, $1 million grant from the Qatar Foundation, two researchers are tackling a little-heralded subject—food safety—that is becoming increasingly vital as the nation
grows. The project brings together a pair of Cornell scientists working on opposite sides of
the globe: Ali Sultan, PhD, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at
WCMC-Q, and Hussni Mohammed, PhD, an epidemiologist in the College of Veterinary
Medicine on the Ithaca camLISA BANLAKI FRANK
pus. “The idea is to look at
the food chain from farm to
fork,” says Sultan. “This is
the first study in Qatar to
look in such a meticulous,
scientifically detailed way at
the food chain, define any
sources of contamination,
and come up with a riskassessment model.”
According to figures from
Qatar’s Department of Public
Health, incidents of foodborne illness are on the rise;
about 1,600 cases were
reported in 2007, Sultan says,
compared with fewer than 200 in 2004. “The increase could probably be attributed to many
factors,” he says. “It might be because of the rapid rise in population, the increased practice
of reporting incidents, or the opening of new food outlets.” In any given case of food poisoning, the researchers note, it can be hard to track down the source, due to such factors as
the ease of cross-contamination. “If you bring home contaminated meat and cut it up, you
can contaminate the kitchen,” Mohammed says. “So after you cook it, although you killed
the pathogen in the meat, it is still living in the surrounding environment.”
The researchers are focusing on four of the most common pathogens implicated in foodborne illness: E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Listeria monocytogenes. They’re taking samples from such sites as dairy operations, milk processing plants, abattoirs, restaurants, and food
suppliers, as well as analyzing strains isolated from food poisoning cases at Hamad Medical
Corporation, the medical center affiliated with WCMC-Q. Other collaborators in Qatar include
the Department of Public Health Supreme Council of Health and the Department of Animal
Resources. “Our preliminary studies show that these four pathogens are prevalent in the food
animal sources and among human cases with gastroenteritis,” Mohammed reports. “On completion of the investigations, we hope to shed light on how these patients contracted the
infections in the hope of making recommendations to mitigate risk.”
The researchers note that although food-borne illness was once seen as a localized issue,
nowadays—with people and products becoming increasingly mobile—it is a matter of international concern. “Our goal is to help the public, to preserve health in general,” Mohammed
says. “Although we’re working in Qatar, the world is getting smaller and smaller—so the
issues become global.”
— Beth Saulnier
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T
he song is sung to the tune of
“Be Our Guest” from Beauty
and the Beast. But it has a new
title: “Have a Test.”
You’ll feel lots more healthy
We’ll be lots more wealthy
Be our guest! Have a test! Have a test!
In their cabaret show Damaged Care,
Greg LaGana, MD ’71, and Barry Levy, MD
’71, offer a witty musical take on the modern health-care system—from the promise
and pitfalls of technology to the role of
business in medicine. The satirical “Spare
Parts Blues,” with original music by Brad
Ross, contemplates the promise of cloned
pig organs sold on eBay; “Send in the
Dogs” (complete with Levy in canine costume) spoofs the rise of pet therapy. One
of the most popular parodies is the heartfelt “No Time”; sung to “Somewhere”
from West Side Story, it laments the harried
life of the physician:
A chocolate bar and fries
No lunch, no exercise
There’s no time left to heal myself . . .
Someday, when we are retired,
Maybe then we’ll be inspired . . .
to take time
“I’ve had physicians tell me they cried
after they heard that song,” says LaGana.
“It’s a modern dilemma in health care.”
Damaged Care evolved from the class
shows that LaGana and Levy produced as
students; after meeting on the second day
of med school, says Levy, ”we realized we
were kindred spirits.” Both went on to
train in internal medicine; the New Jerseybased LaGana shifted to volunteer teaching after retiring from active practice,
while Levy is a Boston-area specialist in
occupational and environmental medicine
and public health. After taking musical
theater courses at the New School in the
mid-Nineties, the pair pledged to write a
class show for their 25th Reunion. Facing a
deadline, they holed up for the weekend
with pizza and a laptop—and quickly realized a large-scale production would be
impossible to rehearse. “I said, ‘I think this
is a two-man show,’ ” LaGana recalls. “And
Barry said, ‘But I don’t sing.’ And I said,
‘Well, you do now.’ ”
They structured the show around two
contrasting characters: LaGana plays an oldschool workaholic who cares deeply for his
patients but neglects himself, while Levy is
comically fixated on technology as a boon
Music Men
Longtime pals pen and perform a parody
on modern medicine
PROVIDED
not only to human health but his own bottom line. In the end, the characters
embrace a middle ground. “The ideal physician,” Levy concludes, “might be someone
who is entrepreneurial but retains the
human touch in the face of the technology
and time limitations.” Both share anecdotes
from real life: LaGana recalls a caring doctor
who made a house call to treat his childhood asthma attack, while Levy describes a
story that he grew up with: “When my
Uncle Lou delivered me, he turned to my
mother and said, ‘It’s a doctor.’”
LaGana and Levy have performed the
forty-five-minute show more than 120
times nationwide—not only at their 25th
Reunion but their 35th as well. They have
mounted Damaged Care for Weill Cornell
students, medical societies, health systems,
hospital associations, and numerous other
audiences; it has been featured in such
media as the New York Times, CNN Headline
News, and ABC’s “Nightline.”
While the two have contemplated
licensing the show so it can be performed
more widely, LaGana says that “it seems to
have a lot more credibility, impact, and resonance when it’s performed by physicians.”
They’ve recorded a CD and DVD and—in
the tradition of satirical productions like
Forbidden Broadway—regularly update the
show with new material. “The problem is
trying to stay ahead of the rapid changes in
medicine,” LaGana says. Adds Levy: “Some
years ago we wrote songs about medical
tourism and about writing prescriptions
over the Internet. These have become mainstream. Now, we have parodies about the
health-care policy that covers nothing and
hospitals telling low-income patients, ‘Go
away, you’re sick!’”
— Beth Saulnier
Let’s put on a show: Barry Levy, MD ’71 (left), and Greg LaGana, MD ’71, created and star
in the musical revue Damaged Care.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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Talk of the Gown
Father’s Day
A technique developed at Weill Cornell allows some men,
long considered infertile, to have biological children
JOHN ABBOTT
Peter Schlegel, MD
T
he man had survived testicular cancer in his twenties, but a decade later he was
facing a different kind of crisis: infertility. “Having children was critically important to him and his wife,” recalls Peter Schlegel, MD, professor and chairman of
urology and professor of reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell. Because of his cancer’s
advanced state, the patient had been rushed into chemotherapy without being offered
the option of banking his sperm; now he’d been diagnosed as infertile. But thanks to a
technique developed and refined at Weill Cornell, there was hope that he—as well as
others who lack sperm in their semen for a variety of reasons—could conceive with
their own DNA. “Until fifteen years ago, this was an untreatable medical problem,”
Schlegel says. “It was assumed that all these men were sterile. They had to use donor
sperm or adopt.” Now, he says, “their fertility options may be far better.”
The technique, an outpatient procedure called microdissection testicular sperm
extraction (microTESE), involves opening up the testicles and looking for sperm in a
targeted way. Since there are hundreds of sperm-making tubules in each testicle,
Schlegel explains, some may still produce sperm even if most do not. Those that still
16
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
work tend to be larger, whiter, and thicker—distinctions an operating microscope can reveal. “In
the past we’d do random biopsy of the testicle
where you had no idea what you were sampling,” Schlegel says. “This is a completely new
avenue of treatment that most people didn’t
think was feasible.”
The success of microTESE depends on the
cause of a man’s azoospermia, the medical term
for absence of sperm in the ejaculate. Overall,
Schlegel and his team are able to retrieve sperm
from 60 percent of men. Those retrievals lead to
pregnancies nearly half the time, usually resulting in live births; random biopsies allow sperm
to be found only half to two-thirds as often as
microTESE does.
Schlegel stresses that the technique is sorely
needed. About 1 percent of men have no sperm
in their ejaculate, and the problem affects twothirds of those who are treated for cancer. Despite
awareness of the side effects of chemotherapy on
fertility, only about a third of men bank their
sperm before treatment, Schlegel says. And while
prepubescent boys who are treated for cancer
may ultimately be able to produce sperm and
conceive naturally, sperm-preservation techniques for that age group are still experimental,
involving removing testicular tissue and freezing
it for future grafting. Other causes of azoospermia
include undescended testicles, hormonal problems, and genetic conditions such as Klinefelter’s
syndrome (in which men have an extra X chromosome) or deletions of certain areas on the Y
chromosome. “Some of those men, depending
on the location or type of deletion, will have
sperm, and some will have zero chance of
sperm,” Schlegel says. “We can quantify the
chance of retrieval based on the cause.”
The first published report of the microdissection procedure was in 1999. Schlegel and his colleagues published the results of microTESE
among seventeen male cancer survivors in 2001,
finding it successful in 43 percent of them. After
trying microTESE among fifty-six more survivors,
they updated their findings in March 2011 in the
Journal of Clinical Oncology. Retrieval rates ranged
from 85 percent among men treated for testicular
11-21WCMspecial11totg_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:14 PM Page 17
cancer to 30 percent among those who
had lymphoma, with the variation likely
due to whether they were treated with
platinum-based drugs that can be toxic to
the testicles.
Since Weill Cornell began offering the
procedure fifteen years ago, it has treated
some 1,400 men, about 7 percent of whom
survived cancer. Patients are put under
general anesthesia and anywhere
from ten to 10,000 sperm are
retrieved over one to two and a
half hours—compared to seven
hours when doctors first started
performing it, Schlegel says.
Usually, the sperm is used immediately to fertilize a partner’s eggs
and the resulting embryos
implanted, with any remaining
embryos frozen for future use.
Patients are given local anesthetics and anti-inflammatories
to reduce swelling, but many
don’t need pain medication,
Schlegel says. Most return to
work within three to five days and can
resume everyday activities, even cycling,
within a month. Fluid collection around
the testicle is less common with
microTESE than with random biopsies, he
adds. And refinements of the procedure
have reduced tissue damage, even as doctors are able to search the testicles more
thoroughly than in the past.
When the thirty-something cancer survivor and his wife came to Weill Cornell
four years ago, their prospects looked dim.
The man had undergone a random biopsy
Fertile ground: Advanced techniques have
allowed urologists to identify the tubules
most likely to contain viable sperm.
sperm-retrieval procedure elsewhere, and no
sperm were found. His hormone levels and
other tests also suggested little chance of
finding usable sperm. But Schlegel arrived at
the opposite conclusion. “We saw he’d actually be a good candidate for treatment,” he
says. “Ninety-nine percent of the testicle
may show no cells developing toward
sperm, but even 1 percent of the testicle
marginally working is a highly
PROVIDED
encouraging finding for us.”
Doctors were able to retrieve
sperm from the man—on Father’s
Day, no less—and immediately
injected it into four eggs collected
from his wife. One fertilized and
ultimately developed into the
couple’s daughter, now three.
When they saw Schlegel at a
party for doctors and patients
after their daughter’s birth, the
normally stoic man was tearyeyed, and his wife broke down.
“The two of them were just
ecstatic,” he says. “That they
went from being a happy couple together
to one with children made a huge difference in their lives. It was everything.”
— Jordan Lite
Making Accommodations
A Muslim doctor explores how medicine can
honor faith-based requirements for physical modesty
T
a
im Padela, MD ’05, was a fourth-year medical student when
the legal battle over Terri Schiavo’s life made national headlines. Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state since
1990; her husband was seeking to respect her prior wishes by having her feeding tube removed. As the case sparked ethical debates
around the country, Padela found himself called upon to provide a
unique perspective. “Because I was a Muslim medical student, all of
a sudden people expected me to know what the guidelines of my
faith would be,” Padela recalls. “I was supposed to be an expert in
Muslim health-care behavior: ‘What does Islam say about feeding
tubes at the end of life?’ Having my feet in both cultures—not only
being a medical practitioner, but being of the Muslim faith—I
should be able to speak to both communities.”
Today, such questions are at the center of Padela’s professional
life. In addition to being board-certified in emergency medicine,
Padela has done extensive research at the intersection of medicine
and Islam. As a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the
University of Michigan, Padela studied health-care disparities in
Muslim and Arab-American populations and ways in which hospitals and physicians can accommodate the cultural needs of such
patients; he has also served as a fellow with the Institute for Social
Policy & Understanding, an American Muslim think-tank, working
to reduce cultural barriers to clinical care for Muslim patients. This
summer, he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago’s
MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics as well as its newly
established Program in Medicine and Religion. “My interest is in
how patients are treated by physicians and the health-care system,”
says Padela. “Using the Muslim patient experience as a lens to look
at these larger issues around health-care disparities and cultural
accommodation seemed like a natural fit.”
Born in New York to Pakistani parents, Padela spent part of his
childhood in Pakistan; he has also lived in Egypt, where he studied
Arabic and Islamic law. A double major in biomedical engineering
and Arabic language and literature at the University of Rochester,
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Talk of the Gown
titioner while the male physician observes,
based on accommodations of these sorts of
or even if he simply dons gloves to avoid
he speaks Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish,
things,” he says. “Many women might delay
skin-to-skin contact. “The recommendaand his parents’ regional dialect. During his
seeing an ob/gyn because they’re trying to
tions are common sense, and they’re very
final year at Weill Cornell, he became the
find a female doctor. There are low rates of
simple,” says Rodriguez del Pozo, who
first medical student to do an elective on
screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal
notes that such guidelines can also apply
the new Qatar campus, studying Islamic
cancer in South Asian Americans, because of
to treatment of observant Jews and membioethics and how the medical system
feeling uncomfortable uncovering their genbers of other faiths that require modesty.
accommodates Muslim patients, under the
italia in front of someone else.”
“As in every doctor-patient interaction, it’s
mentorship of associate professor of public
While all health-care institutions operall about fostering trust. A simple gesture
health Pablo Rodriguez del Pozo, MD.
ate under resource constraints—and it isn’t
can go a long way.”
That work has inspired several papers,
always possible to offer a same-gender
And conversely, Padela stresses, negative
including one published last year in the
provider—the researchers say that such
interactions can have lasting consequences.
Journal of Medical Ethics entitled “Muslim
issues can often be ameliorated through
“Patients will talk to me about being in a
Patients and Cross-gender Interactions in
communication and minor adjustments.
nursing home after a stroke, and what they
Medicine: An Islamic Bioethical PerFor example, a patient can be allowed to
remember most was being bathed by a perspective.” The article, which garnered covwear his or her own clothes, or a more
son of the opposite sex—for them, that was
erage in the New York Times and USA Today,
modest robe, rather than a revealing hospia daily humiliation,” he says. “Or a Muslim
opens with a theoretical case: a thirty-fivetal gown, and uncover only those body
female who comes to the ED with vaginal
year-old African American woman comes
parts that are clinically necessary for exambleeding, and all she’s told
into an urgent care clinic comis, ‘We can’t assign a woplaining of leg pain after a fall.
man to take care of you.’
Accompanied by a male relaThat can have lasting
tive, she’s wearing a Muslim
effects on whether they go
headscarf and refuses to
to a health-care provider
remove her clothes or don an
next time—and the real
exam gown. When the male
issue is how they felt they
physician tries to introduce
were treated. People may
himself, she asks, “Are there
not mind that they couldany woman doctors around?”
n’t find an accommodaThe paper goes on to
tion so much as the way it
explore the various Islamic
was delivered.”
rules surrounding modesty and
Instead of dismissing a
gender interaction that can
patient’s concerns for the
affect medical treatment; they
sake of expediting treatinclude the prohibition against
ment, Padela says, proan unrelated woman and man
viders can often bridge the
being alone together, physical
gap by assuring patients
contact between the genders, or
WEILL CORNELL MEDICAL COLLEGE
that they respect their cusuncovering certain body parts,
Modernity meets modesty: At WCMC-Q, students can practice examination
toms and will do their best
such as a woman’s hair. “There
on a simulator—but when it comes to seeing a patient of the opposite
to honor them. As Rodis a preference that, ideally, a
gender, they’re trained to inquire if the person feels comfortable with it.
riguez del Pozo puts it:
patient should be treated by a
“Efficiency and modesty
Muslim physician of the same
are not always 100 percent compatible—
ination. “Here in Doha, a male doctor or
sex—a man by a man or a woman by a
and we probably need to be a little bit less
student does not go in to see a female
woman,” Rodriguez del Pozo notes. “If that
efficient to satisfy the patient’s request for
patient unless he has first asked a female
is not possible, the second best is a nonmodesty. As in many other instances, that’s
nurse, doctor, or classmate to inquire if the
Muslim of the same gender. The third prefersimply good medicine.” Padela points out
patient minds being seen by a male,”
ence is by religion again. And in last place, a
that medicine has a long tradition of
Rodriguez del Pozo notes. “It’s not the law,
non-Muslim of the opposite sex.” He notes
accommodating religious requirements—
but it’s the custom of the place. My stuthat among observant Muslims, such issues
from the development of bloodless surgery
dents have to learn it very early on: you
aren’t just a matter of discomfort or personal
for Jehovah’s Witnesses to the use of
don’t go into a room without asking.”
preference. “In Islamic traditions,” he says,
Sabbath elevators for observant Jews. “In
To avoid breaking the prohibition
“these are commands.”
our medical encounters, we’re playing the
against being fully alone with a member of
As Padela has found in his research,
role of doctor, no matter where we come
the opposite sex, physicians can use a priincluding focus groups he has conducted
from,” he says. “Whatever I can do to make
vacy curtain instead of closing the exam
with Muslim Americans, lack of accommothe patient experience better, as long as it
room door. As in the resolution to the
dation for modesty rules can have marked
doesn’t compromise my own values, I will
paper’s theoretical case, strictures against
effects on health outcomes. “Studies have
try to do.”
touching can be satisfied if the physical
shown that Muslim women in Michigan
— Beth Saulnier
exam is conducted by a female nurse pracchange their health-care-seeking habits
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WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
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Data Plan
With electronic records key to health-care
reform, a Weill Cornell program aims to train
a new generation of health IT professionals
Jessica Ancker, PhD, MPH
ABBOTT
K
aren Gonta has a vision of
medical information without
borders. “Once we’re able to
share electronic data across the entire system and put an end to the fragmentation
of information, we’ll transform health care
as we know it,” says Gonta, a caseworker
at an Ithaca-based mental health clinic.
“We stand to learn a lot about what’s
working and what isn’t, and to compare
newer treatments with standard ones.”
Now in its second year, the Weill
Cornell Health Information Technology
Certificate Program is training professionals
like Gonta for careers at the nexus of health
care and IT. The six-month program is a
collaboration between the Weill Cornell
Graduate School of Medical Sciences and
Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. Faculty on the two
campuses collaborate to develop shared
educational materials, but admit and train
separate classes of students. In early 2010, it
was one of nine programs nationwide to
receive a federal health IT stimulus grant to
establish one of these advanced training
programs.
Health IT is a national priority—and a
major feature of the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009, with an
investment of up to $30 billion. As such, it
promises to improve the way patients
receive, experience, and benefit from
health care in the twenty-first century, says
program director Jessica Ancker, PhD,
MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics
and public health. “It may seem surprising,” says Ancker, “but fewer than half of
the private medical practices in the country
have converted from paper to electronic
record-keeping—and even the ‘wired’
minority still may not be reaping the full
benefits of the technological revolution in
health care.”
The main focus of health IT is the
development and implementation of electronic health records (EHRs). The Office of
the National Coordinator for Health IT, the
government agency funding the health IT
initiative, has developed a program to
incentivize physicians and hospitals for the
“meaningful use” of EHRs to improve the
quality, safety, and efficiency of care. To
accomplish this, EHRs must provide important functions such as decision support,
must be compliant with privacy and security regulations, and must be interoperable—
that is, able to share data with all players
on a patient’s health-care team.
“Electronic health records offer much
more than just the electronic storage of
patient data,” says Rainu Kaushal, MD,
MPH, the program co-director and the
director of the Center for Healthcare Informatics and Policy at Weill Cornell. “They
have the ability to potentially transform
care by making sure the right thing is done
for the right patient at the right time in
more efficient ways.”
To accelerate the conversion from paper
to electronic records, the federal government is offering monetary incentives to
health-care providers and hospitals that
can demonstrate that they have purchased
EHR software and are using it effectively
and appropriately. At the same time,
Ancker says, EHRs must be designed to
match the needs of real-world clinical
care—needs that vary with specialty, geography, and patient population, among
other factors. “When you consider the
many components of patient care—hospitals, pharmacies, insurance plans, public
health departments, and thousands of private medical practices scattered across the
country—you begin to get a sense of the
complexity of our health-care system,”
Ancker says. “Without rigorous training in
the specific needs and parameters of health
care, even the most sophisticated IT specialist could get lost in the labyrinth.”
The Weill Cornell program offers a rigorous curriculum with a mix of health
informatics theory, pragmatic application
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Talk of the Gown
of that theory, and team-based collaboration on multidisciplinary projects. Students
become versed in the legal and financial
dimensions of EHR technology, along with
the policy implications of the national
push to connect all the elements of the
health-care system through technology.
Online lectures cover topics as diverse as
the culture and politics of health care,
data-sharing and security, reporting
requirements, and project management.
The program also includes facilitated
teamwork with experts in academia and
industry; one Saturday per month, students
convene in either New York City or Ithaca
for intensive collaboration on a project,
with the two groups teleconferenced
together. “For example, we might present
them with an EHR that has weaknesses and
challenge them to think through a variety
of solutions to the problem,” Ancker says.
“In a small-group environment, they’ll
decide whether the system needs to be
modified, overhauled entirely, or replaced
with another type of software. They also
learn to enter data, requiring them to get
down to the granular level around the codes
pertaining to particular medical conditions,
and retrieve data that might be useful for
quality reporting or public health.”
The Weill Cornell program graduated
twenty-six students last summer, with a new
class set to finish in March 2012. They
include physicians, nurses, other health professionals, and administrators, along with IT
specialists seeking new careers in health
care—one of the fastest growing fields even
in this sluggish economy, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. An estimated
55,000 new health IT jobs are expected to
be created in the next five years, industry
analysts say, spanning such diverse positions as quality assurance engineer, EHR
software trainer, and clinical analyst.
Ancker stresses that students don’t
need to be tech wizards to do well in the
program and gain the necessary skills to
succeed on the job. Recent graduate Mary
Koval, a registered nurse who manages the
clinical quality program for the Weill
Cornell physician organization, confesses
that she used to find computers intimidating. “I’ve been involved in quality management for more than fifteen years,” she
says. “When I started, we used manual
chart reviews to assess quality of care. I
didn’t know whether I’d take to the technology when I entered the program—but
it quickly became second nature for me.”
20
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
The program’s combination of distance
and on-site learning worked well for Koval
and also for Gonta, who’s raising a sevenyear-old daughter in addition to working
full-time. Its flexible structure also appealed
to Joseph Wu, who attended while studying for a master’s in health administration
through Cornell’s Sloan Program. With his
certificate in hand, he jumped into a summer internship at PricewaterhouseCoopers
in New York City, where he further honed
his skills in health IT strategy and implementation. “When I applied to the certificate program, the field was growing so fast
that I didn’t know what would be offered,”
says Wu, who is on track to complete his
master’s this spring. “It was only afterward,
during my internship, that I saw the total
relevance and quality of my training.”
— Margaret Crane
Blind Faith
With a radical new prosthetic retina,
Sheila Nirenberg, PhD, aims to help millions
with degenerative eye disease
ABBOTT
Sheila Nirenberg, PhD
S
ome ten million Americans have degenerative retinal disease; of those, 1.9 million
suffer from advanced-stage blindness.
Historically, there has been little that doctors can do. Medications help only a small subset of
patients—and then just slightly improve vision or
slow the disease’s progress. So far, prosthetic retinas
11-21WCMspecial11totg_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:14 PM Page 21
have had limited appeal: they reveal high-contrast
edges and spots of light, allowing people to orient themselves within spaces they already know
but hardly approximating normal vision. But
now an experimental, next-generation artificial
retina developed by Sheila Nirenberg, PhD—associate professor of computational neuroscience in
the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz
Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine
and in the Department of Physiology and
Biophysics—is currently in the animal testing
phase and showing great promise, producing
images so sharp and subtle that they closely
resemble what a fully sighted person would see.
In healthy eyes, the retina serves as the entryway for visual information to travel to the brain.
At its front end, photoreceptors pick up patterns
of light and dark. In the middle, complicated circuitry extracts information from those patterns,
“converting it into a code the brain can read,”
Nirenberg explains. From there, the retina’s ganglion cells send that neural code to the brain in
the form of electrical signals called spikes. Any
image can be converted into its own corresponding code, or pattern of spikes, using a set of
mathematical equations.
Existing artificial retinas, which have been
around for about two decades, have tried to replicate the work of the photoreceptors with surgically implanted, light-receiving electrodes. But
without incorporating the neural code to decipher what’s in front of the eye, Nirenberg says,
“they’re very limited—it’s nothing close to normal vision.” She and postdoc Chethan Pandarinath, who earned a PhD in Nirenberg’s lab, have
taken a different, two-pronged tack: a device that
processes the code plus gene therapy that activates the ganglion cells.
Surgically implanted electrodes are not the
main focus of Nirenberg’s design. Instead, a
patient would receive gene therapy that makes
the ganglion cells—which are typically spared by
retinal diseases—express a light-sensitive protein
called channelrhodopsin. “Surgery won’t need to
be involved,” Nirenberg says, “just a quick injection into the eye.” About three weeks later, after
the therapy has taken hold, a patient would don
glasses containing a camera and a chip (similar to
the microprocessors inside cellphones) that
processes the code. The camera “sees” the images
and sends them to the chip, which converts
them to light pulses. Those pulses are actually
image-specific neural code, and they activate the
light-sensitive channelrhodopsin in the ganglion
cells. In so doing, the cells can fire the right code
to the brain so the patient can see. “Other people
have also used this light-sensitive gene, but they
don’t have the retina’s code, which is our key
ingredient,” Nirenberg notes. “We’ve brought it
back to life so it can fire like a normal retina.”
Until she began testing the artificial retina,
Nirenberg’s focus was largely on basic science,
focusing on two fundamental conceptual challenges in neuroscience: understanding the neural code and determining how populations of
retinal neurons work together to encode scenes
such as faces and landscapes. In 2009, one of her
students mentioned improvements in channelrhodopsin technology—and Nirenberg had a
eureka moment. “I thought, Wow, now we can
put our knowledge of the code with channelrhodopsin and this will work,” she remembers.
“I almost fell off my chair. I realized I knew
exactly how to make a prosthetic.”
When Nirenberg and Pandarinath tested the
concept in mice later that year, it worked as
anticipated. In findings she presented at last
year’s Society for Neuroscience meeting, Nirenberg showed that the retinas of completely
blind mice were able to produce normal firing
patterns and animals treated with the technology
could discern moving images. The results led to
a $250,000 prize from the BioAccelerate NYC
A
B
C
D
PROVIDED BY SHEILA NIRENBERG
contest to develop the technology for commercial use. Nirenberg plans to collaborate with
scientists from Harvard, the University of
Florida, and a German company to develop it
for monkeys—and, ultimately, people. “It’s
exciting to know that what you’ve been working on suddenly has human value,” Nirenberg
says of her shift from basic science to clinical
applications, “especially as the years go by and
you realize you need to do something for people, not just because it’s intellectually interesting.” Tests of the retina in monkeys have
begun, and if all goes well, it could be on the
market within five years, Nirenberg says. The
coding aspect of the technology could also be
used to drive the electrodes in patients with
older prosthetic retinas.
If the device sounds like science fiction,
Nirenberg says, its results would be unmistakably real to the people who receive it. She
admits that patients wearing the glasses might
“look sort of dorky.” But the ultimate hope, she
says, is that “they’d be able to see—see patterned images, see faces, walk through the
supermarket and pick out a box of cereal, recognize their children.”
— Jordan Lite
In sight: An image of a child’s
face seen in its original form
(A), as it has been encoded
by the new prostethic device
(B), and how it is reconstructed from those signals and
“seen” by the patient (C). D
shows the same image reconstructed from the signals of a
blind retina treated with the
standard prosthetic.
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Passing the
Torch
A conversation with
Dean Antonio Gotto
By Beth Saulnier
A
t the end of December, Antonio
M. Gotto Jr., MD, DPhil, steps
down after fifteen years as dean
of the Medical College. The decade and a half
since Dean Gotto took office have been transformative years for Weill Cornell—physically,
financially, academically, and scientifically.
During his tenure, the Medical College has seen
an overhaul of its curriculum; record-setting
fundraising campaigns; a renaming in honor of
foremost benefactors Joan and Sanford Weill;
the establishment of the Qatar campus and of a
medical school in Tanzania; affiliation with the
Methodist Hospital in Houston; and the development of state-of-the-art facilities including
the Weill Greenberg Center and the Belfer
Research Building, which will double the institution’s lab space when it’s completed in 2014.
Gotto was born in Nashville, the son of a
schoolteacher and a publishing company
employee. He earned his undergraduate degree
in chemistry from Vanderbilt University with
minors in English and math. As a Rhodes
Scholar, he earned a doctorate in biochemistry
22
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
from Oxford under Sir Hans Kornberg, PhD,
and Nobel laureate Sir Hans Krebs, MD, before
returning to Vanderbilt for his MD. An expert
in lipid science whose work helped establish
statins as a standard of cardiac care, Gotto
came to Weill Cornell from Houston’s Baylor
College of Medicine and Methodist Hospital,
where he served as chairman of medicine for
two decades. He and his wife, Anita, have been
married for fifty-two years; they have three
daughters and five grandchildren. After retiring
as dean, Gotto will remain on the faculty, continue his research, and serve as a Cornell
University vice president and as co-chairman of
the Weill Cornell Medical College Board
of Overseers.
This fall, Dean Gotto sat down for a conversation with Weill Cornell Medicine, offering
thoughts on such varied topics as his legacy,
the landmark Weill gift, the relationship
between the Medical College and the Ithaca
campus, his yen for spy novels—and what he
hopes the New York Times will leave out of
his obituary.
JOHN ABBOTT
JOHN ABBOTT
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To mark Dean Gotto’s retirement, Weill
Cornell Medicine asked prominent
members of the Medical College community
to share their encomia. For Sanford Weill’s
remarks, see page 3.
Weill Cornell Medicine: What do you find most gratifying about academic medicine?
Antonio Gotto: There’s excitement in discovery, but also in passing on knowledge to the next
generation—seeing them stimulated in intellectual curiosity, which they will apply whether
they’re doing research or practicing medicine. It’s our intention that our students have inquiring minds, and in practice they will continue the process of learning; by being curious they’ll
find things that help their patients.
A
WCM: How was your medical school experience different from that of today’s students?
How have you seen medical education evolve?
AG: It was based very much on a large lecture approach, and there are fewer lectures today.
Our new curriculum, when it was introduced fifteen years ago, moved away from that and
toward small-group, problem-based learning. Now we’re in the process of changing again,
toward competency training—letting people move at different paces. Another difference is
that for residents and students there are limited hours. There weren’t any regulations like that;
you could be on as long as you had to be on. This has obvious disadvantages of fatigue, but
there’s an advantage in the continuity and the experience that you get. When I was a student
at Vanderbilt, the only way an intern could get a vacation was to get a medical student to fill
in. It was good clinical experience for students, but you can’t do that today without breaking
some regulations.
s dean and provost for medical affairs, Tony Gotto has
advanced clinical care,
research, education, and outreach, including major global health initiatives. He has helped bring significant new
resources to the College, recruited outstanding new faculty, and developed and
renovated clinical and research space. He
was a driving force behind the construction of our new Belfer Research Building.
And he expanded the College’s mission
globally, with the establishment of Weill
Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
He is also a superb role model for our
students. A world leader in atherosclerosis
research, he has shown enormous dedication to the public good, disseminating
information about cardiovascular disease to
the general public as well as to the medical
profession. And he has led Weill Cornell to
greater contributions in global health,
advancing our efforts in Doha, at Weill
Bugando Medical Centre in Tanzania, and
in Haiti, Brazil, and elsewhere.
I’m delighted that Tony has agreed to
stay on for three years as University vice
president and co-chair of the Board of
Overseers. His leadership will be invaluable.
David Skorton, MD
President, Cornell University
A
lthough Dr. Gotto and I were
in Houston at the same time,
we did not know each other
then. However, before coming to Weill Cornell, I heard a great deal
about him—all positive—and it has all
proven true. What I have learned since is
that he has a remarkable knack for pushing things forward, even though people
don’t always realize they are being (gently)
pushed. He was missed a great deal when
he left Baylor and Methodist, and he will
be missed here as well.
Michael Stewart, MD
Professor and chairman, Department of
Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery
E. Darracott Vaughan, MD, Senior
Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs
24
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
WCM: Why is medicine still a gratifying career for young people to go into? One hears
about physicians telling their kids, “Don’t go into medicine, it’s managed care, it’s
not the same.”
AG: Medicine enables you to help people, and at the same time you’re learning new things,
which goes on throughout your career. You have curiosity about discovery—whether it’s in
the laboratory, in the clinic, or just observing your patients. I think that combination will
continue to stimulate the best and the brightest to go into medicine, even with all of the
restrictions and various negative things that you may hear about it.
WCM: Is it true that you originally wanted to be a lawyer?
AG: It’s true. I was on the debating and forensics teams in school and at Vanderbilt, so I
thought the legal profession and politics would naturally follow. My father did not have a
high regard for lawyers, so after discussions with him, I decided I would pursue medicine
instead. I thought about engineering and other possibilities, but I felt that medicine would
be more interesting and challenging. Growing up, I was a great fan of Sherlock Holmes; I
read all of his stories and got interested in using chemistry and other techniques to solve
crimes—which is not that different from using chemistry to solve medical mysteries.
WCM: At Oxford, you worked under the legendary biochemist Hans Krebs, who won the
Nobel Prize for discovering the citric acid cycle known as the Krebs Cycle. What was
that like?
AG: My direct supervisor was [the eminent biochemist] Sir Hans Kornberg; Sir Hans Krebs was
the professor and my internal examiner. Professor Krebs was very Germanic. Every morning
he would come by and say, “Vat are you doing?” and I would explain to him what I was doing.
During the course of my research, which was to determine how microorganisms grew on a
particular two-carbon compound, I discovered a new enzyme and managed to crystallize it.
After convincing myself these were real crystals by repeating it several times, I got up in the
middle of the night and made fresh preparation, which were beautiful structures, and set up
a phase-contrast microscope. So when Professor Krebs came in sharply at eight, he asked me
the usual question and I said, “I have something I’d like to show you.” He looked it at and
said, “Satisfactory, quite satisfactory.” Kornberg, who was my tutor, asked, “What did the professor say?” I said, “I don’t think he was too impressed. He said, ‘Quite satisfactory.’ ” Kornberg
said, “When I discovered the glyoxylate cycle, he only said ‘Satisfactory’—so that’s the highest praise you’ll ever get.”
WCM: What excited you about lipid science? Why did you devote your research career to
that field?
AG: One reason is it offered the opportunity to study a disease at a basic science level and also
at a clinical level, to treat patients. Number two, lipids play a central role in cardiovascular disease, which is our major killer. It’s been gratifying to see the development of statin drugs, which
22-29WCMspecial11gotto_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:36 PM Page 25
JANET CHARLES
W
White coat to black tie: Gotto accepts the Greenberg Award in May 2010.
have been so effective not only in reducing cholesterol and modifying lipids, but also in treating and preventing disease.
WCM: Because you were involved in some of the major trials that demonstrated that efficacy,
you have helped prolong millions of lives, which is something that your average physician
can’t say. How does that feel?
AG: I believe I’ve made some contribution to the field, but there are a lot of others also. It
feels good to be working on something that has turned out to be so beneficial. It’s not as if
after ten years they found out the drugs cause cancer or cause people to go blind—both of
which were feared at the time.
WCM: So in the early days, it was feared that statins could be dangerous?
AG: It was thought that if you interfered with cholesterol or metabolism you were likely to
cause some bad effects. In 1989, an investigative reporter named Thomas Moore wrote an
article in the Atlantic called “The Cholesterol Myth” that said lowering your cholesterol won’t
make you live any longer and may cause you harm. Much of what he claimed turned out to
be incorrect. Lowering cholesterol doesn’t cause cancer, can be treated with drugs, and does
prolong life. He claimed the “cholesterol myth” was part of a giant conspiracy concocted by
scientists in NIH who wanted more government funding, as well as by pharmaceutical companies, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Cardiology—and that
this whole conspiracy was masterminded by a small group of academics that he called the
Cholesterol Mafia. My name was Antonio Gotto, so I was not surprised to be included.
WCM: Have you been able to keep up with your research, with the demands of your
job as dean?
AG: To a limited extent. I had a large specialized center of research for atherosclerosis the
entire time I was in Houston. I maintain some research collaboration and involvement in
hat is the secret to Tony
Gotto’s uncanny ability
to recruit so effectively
and to surround himself
with such remarkable talent? It’s quite simple. (His absolute integrity, fairness, and
values go without saying.) Once Tony
develops confidence in a faculty member,
he lets him or her “fly.” He guides, mentors, and remediates by nudging, not browbeating. He frees his faculty to blossom and
meet their potential. Micromanagement is
not in his vocabulary.
So, in my opinion, Tony Gotto’s most
important contribution to our Medical
College has been not so much the magnificent clinical and research buildings that
have revitalized an aging campus, not his
infusion of a Texas-style “can do” attitude
toward fundraising, nor his ability to bring
meaningful stability to this academic medical center during a period of external turbulence. Of course, those are all important
and they will be remembered. But his most
important contribution to WCMC has
been his legacy of academic and clinical
excellence in an environment that nurtures individual creativity within a vibrant
community of collective scholarship.
Andrew Schafer, MD
Chairman, Department of Medicine
E. Hugh Luckey Distinguished Professor
I
have always been amazed at how
Tony can not just master arcana,
but can turn around and use this
information effectively. Here is but
one example: At one time, to construct
the Belfer Research Building, the Medical
College was going to amend the ZLDA by
going through ULURP to extend the
LSCFP. In the end, we decided to go directly to BSA to get the required FAR.
Now, Dr. Gotto, being a busy guy,
could not possibly have heard these
arcane real estate terms more than once.
Nonetheless, he stood up in front of a
group of donors (many of whom were in
the real estate business) and, in response
to a question about zoning, delivered a
completely cogent and amazingly accurate
summary of the college’s process, using
every term with precision!
Stephen Cohen
Executive Vice Provost
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I
met Dean Gotto many years ago
when he presented his “State of the
Medical College” address to the
Alumni Association board. I was
impressed that the dean took the time out
of his busy schedule to address a group of
alumni with a detailed and well-thoughtout presentation. I cannot overstress the
goodwill it created. It made alumni in
general, and the board in particular, feel
relevant to the Medical College and the
students. Many programs have been started and expanded under his watch, including the Stethoscope Initiative, Alumni to
Student Knowledge program, and the
Dean’s Circle, which now boasts more
than 162 members. Dean Gotto is affable
and self-effacing, exemplified by his
recounting of the newspaper report of his
hiring as, “Famous cookbook author hired
as dean of Cornell Medical College.”
Michael Alexiades, MD ’83
President, WCMC Alumni Association
D
r. Gotto and I have worked
closely together on
fundraising for Weill
Cornell. We have had some
tremendous successes, a few surprises, and
some disappointments. Human nature
being what it is, we have also had some
laughs. He has been a superb fundraiser for
several reasons: he has been dean at the
right time, at the right institution, and
with the right leadership. Weill Cornell’s
mission and its location in New York City
have been catalysts for support, and the
leadership of our Medical College is outstanding. He has built thoughtful and productive collaborations with Cornell
University and with NewYork-Presbyterian
Hospital. He has encouraged, and put his
trust in, a skilled development team.
I believe, however, that the real key to
his success lies in his character. I’m no
expert, but I spend a lot of time around
powerful and successful people. Among
august types such as these, Dr. Gotto
stands out. He is a man of great integrity,
passion, and grace. He also has natural
kindness and humility, attributes that
cannot be taught. He approaches donors
as valued friends—and when gifts come
in, he is as happy for the donor as he is
for Weill Cornell, because he knows that a
special bond has been created.
Larry Schafer
Vice Provost for Development
26
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
AMELIA PANICO
Global vision: Gotto with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete in April 2010
clinical trials, but to a much lesser degree. I do think that it’s a good idea for administrators
to maintain contact with their roots.
WCM: Have you been able to keep a hand in patient care?
AG: Yes, I still see consultations.
WCM: How has that informed your work as dean?
AG: You see the move from paper records to the electronic medical record, you see more regulations, reporting requirements, and red tape. This allows you to experience the problems
the practicing physician is facing.
WCM: How did you come to be recruited to Weill Cornell in the first place?
AG: After I’d been at NIH for about three years, I started getting offers from medical schools
and universities. In 1970, I received an offer from Cornell for an endowed professorship in
cardiology. After several visits, I ended up going to Texas. At that time, we had three young
children and thought Houston would be a good place to rear them; our oldest daughter had
been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, which requires a lot of attention. While Cornell had a
long and excellent history, Baylor was a newer medical college; it had a frontier spirit and
seemed to offer opportunities to build programs. Seven or eight years later, I was invited back
to look at the chairmanship of medicine, but I wound up staying in Texas. Then when Dr.
Gordon Douglas retired as chairman, I came for another visit. So that was the third attempt
to recruit me. And finally the fourth time . . .
WCM: So we had to woo you four times before you said yes?
AG: Four times before I left Texas, yes.
WCM: Was it hard for a Southern gentleman to move to New York?
AG: I had been chair of medicine for twenty years at Baylor and Methodist Hospital, and
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thought I had accomplished most of what I would be able to do there. What was also different from the three earlier recruitment attempts was that our daughters had grown up and
were no longer living at home. In 1970 I had actually timed the commute from Ridgewood,
New Jersey, to the medical center and decided it was too long to do every morning. So I knew
I wanted to live near the medical center, where I’d be spending most of my hours. We wound
up living ten years at Payson House, which is just across the street.
WCM: In a nutshell, what’s special about Weill Cornell?
AG: The collegiality of the faculty. It’s small enough that people get to know their peers quite
well. It has a nurturing atmosphere toward students, faculty, staff, and patients. It has a reputation as a good place to work and a good place to be. It has an enthusiastic board that has
been enormously generous, and a supportive university board and president in Ithaca.
WCM: What did the Weills’ landmark gift mean to the institution?
AG: It had a transforming effect, because it triggered a series of successful philanthropic
campaigns, including one of the largest fundraising campaigns any medical school has ever
carried off.
WCM: How has the college evolved during your tenure?
AG: When I came, it had a reputation for high-quality clinical work and education, but it had a
small research platform and not much research space. It was financially strapped. We had not
had a large fundraising campaign in some time. Our activities were restricted here in Manhattan;
we’d had an affiliation with North Shore University Hospital, but that had been terminated. And
so we had to develop a series of teaching sites in the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell network, at affiliated hospitals that hadn’t been used much for teaching. We’ve moved to a much
greater extent on the international scene, as well as nationally with an affiliation with the
Methodist Hospital in Houston. We also started a series of fundraising campaigns, each targeted
toward specific projects—scientific and clinical objectives or capital projects, such as the Weill
Greenberg Center and currently the Belfer Research Building.
WCM: How is the experience of the average Weill Cornell student different now compared
to when you arrived?
AG: Almost half of our students now take an overseas elective. A lot of them do research;
there’s more research going on at the Medical College and more of the MD-PhD students are
working in labs here. The MCATs and GPAs of entering students are higher than they were
then. The average age of entering students is 23.7 years; most have done volunteer work,
worked in a laboratory, or served in the Peace Corps. It’s a highly qualified group. It’s a different profile than before; as physicians, I hope they will be equally successful as our distinguished alumni.
WCM: The Qatar branch was established during your deanship. Why is the campus important to Weill Cornell?
AG: It represents a partnership with the Qatar Foundation with the aim of establishing an academic medical center in an Arab country in the Middle East, and I think it was a wonderful
opportunity. It has enabled us to test our curriculum, which at that time had been in effect
only five years, in a different cultural environment but with the same academic standards. It
has allowed our doctors, students, and scientists to do research in a population we had not
had access to before. And I think that if anything can create better relationships among different cultures and different parts of the world, it’s medicine. Medicine knows no boundaries.
WCM: How has the relationship between Weill Cornell and the Ithaca campus evolved?
AG: I like to think that the relationship and interactions with Cornell in Ithaca have grown
and increased during my tenure. This has been a high priority. We will have space in the new
building dedicated to joint projects. We’ve given a number of seed grants to stimulate research
between investigators on the two campuses, and they have paid off; they have usually led to
large follow-up funding from NIH or foundations.
WCM: What about the relationship between Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian?
AG: To have a great medical center, a hospital and a medical college have to work hand in
hand. We’ve been joined at the hip since 1927, after Payne Whitney bought this property
I
t is a huge honor to follow in the
distinguished footsteps of Dean
Antonio Gotto. Thanks to the great
work of Dean Gotto, WCMC is
poised to be one of the leaders in
academic medicine in this country. With
the new Belfer Research Building under
construction because of Tony’s immense
success in attracting resources, this institution is ready to achieve the preeminence
in the biomedical sciences that it has
already achieved in clinical medicine.
Thanks to Dean Gotto, WCMC is also
unique among academic medical centers
in having forged meaningful partnerships
here and abroad. Every one of these partnerships has been groundbreaking.
WCMC has benefited from Dr. Gotto’s
superb leadership, and I will have the
tremendous advantage of his continued
engagement, advice, and wisdom over the
next several years. If I can be half as effective as he has been over the last fifteen
years, I will count my tenure as dean
a success.
Laurie Glimcher, MD
Incoming Dean
T
ony Gotto was responsible for
quantum qualitative and quantitative growth in research,
clinical care, and the educational experience at Weill Cornell. He
accomplished this by garnering great
philanthropy and directing it to support a
multiplicity of research, clinical, educational, and even lifestyle programs. He oversaw
the recruitment of numerous gifted scientists and developed the infrastructure necessary to facilitate a marked increase in
NIH and other extramural funding. He
recruited several clinical chairs and significantly grew the full-time faculty. He led the
Medical College through two successful
LCME accreditation reviews and oversaw
curriculum reform. With his great success
in attracting philanthropy to build the
Belfer Research Building, he has positioned
us to become one of the ten leading medical schools in the U.S.
Daniel Knowles, MD
David D. Thompson Professor and
Chairman, Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine
CMO, Weill Cornell Physician Organization
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T
ony is remarkable; he is
dynamic with enormous energy and leadership ability. He
has fostered an environment
of collegiality and collaboration within
the Medical College and with its partners
in the Tri-Institutional area on York
Avenue and around the world. He is able
to engage with a wide variety of individuals, bringing out the best in them to enlist
their support. This is not a skill that can
be easily learned; I believe that it distinguishes leaders who will leave a lasting
legacy from those who will not. A hundred years from now, Tony Gotto will be
remembered for leading Weill Cornell into
the twenty-first century and helping to
forge a new model for academic medical
centers in the world.
David Hajjar, PhD
Dean, Graduate School of Medical Sciences
I
have been impressed with Dean
Gotto’s deep appreciation and
respect for our students and how he
made them feel supported and welcomed. Each year he attended the annual
boat ride for matriculating students, an
opportunity to welcome them to the
Medical College. The next day, he always
presided over opening ceremonies—something the students really appreciated. Dean
Gotto and his wife, Anita, hosted a reception for the first-year class at their home,
purposefully arranging it without a lot of
administrators present so that he had a
chance to meet the students.
The teaching faculty also grew to
respect and admire Dean Gotto. They
appreciated the fact that he carved out
time every year to attend the annual education retreat. Dean Gotto regularly supported the Excellence in Teaching Awards,
another reason why the faculty respected
his engagement at WCMC.
There are so many things that Dean
Gotto championed to make WCMC a better place for our students and faculty. He
made WCMC a special place and promoted extraordinary growth in all of its missions. We must also thank Anita for
lending him to us for these many years.
Carol Storey-Johnson, MD ’77
Senior Associate Dean for Education
Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine
28
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
RENE PEREZ
Life partners: Gotto with his wife, Anita, a former school teacher and avid volunteer
when it was a swamp and gave it to New York Hospital and Cornell University with
the condition they come together, move up here from lower Manhattan, and form
the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. The chairs of the clinical departments are the chiefs of services, so they are jointly selected by the Medical College
and the hospital. Our faculty are the doctors at the hospital; we occupy different
parts of the same building, so we’re closely tied. I’ve been fortunate to work with
Herb Pardes, who during most of my tenure was president and CEO of the hospital.
We had known each other a long time and had shared values about what an academic medical center should be.
WCM: Why is the Belfer Research Building so vital to Weill Cornell?
AG: Research not only generates new knowledge, it attracts students. It also attracts
patients, who want to go where new things are being done and where, in some cases,
they can get into clinical protocols that aren’t available elsewhere. The reputation of
an institution depends not only on its clinical prowess, but also on the new knowledge that comes out of it. So it’s important for the future of this institution that we
build on research and not just be an education and clinical service organization.
WCM: What will retirement look like for you? Will you be able to pursue interests,
both professional and otherwise, that you haven’t had time for?
AG: Well, I’m retiring as dean, but I’m not retiring. There’s a transition period of three
years when I’ll continue working with the new dean and President Skorton, however
I can be helpful to them—but particularly, I imagine, in philanthropy and in some of
the affiliations I’ve helped establish, as well as with interactions with life sciences in
Ithaca.
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WCM: What words of advice might you have for your successor?
AG: The advice I would give is not to forget that we have a tri-partite mission, and
we have to pursue it on all fronts.
WCM: What are your interests and passions outside of work?
AG: My wife, children, and grandchildren. From a recreational standpoint, I enjoy
tennis and water sports. I like to play golf, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play
much, and I’m a very poor golfer. I do like to fish, and I keep a sailboat in Maine.
We have a house in Wayne, a little village about an hour and a half north of
Portland, where we go in August. Maybe we’ll spend more time there. Also, my wife
and I enjoy travel. We’re interested in history, including the history of medicine,
and various other things like spy stories.
WCM: Who’s your favorite spy novelist?
AG: Daniel Silva. He writes about a Mossad operative who is an art restorer.
WCM: And Mrs. Gotto? What are her interests?
AG: She was an elementary school teacher; she taught school in England when we
were there. But with two of our three daughters with juvenile diabetes and my
career having such time demands, she has devoted her life to the family. She has
been a vital part of my career; her interactions with faculty, staff, students, overseers, and potential donors have been indispensable. She has also supported the various organizations that I’ve been involved with, and she has been active with the
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. She also worked with the American Heart
Association, has always had an interest in libraries, and has been an elder at Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church. Most of all, she has been my life partner, main confidante, critic, and friend.
WCM: Did any of your daughters follow you into medicine?
AG: My eldest is a liaison psychiatrist with cancer patients at City of Hope outside
Los Angeles. She went to Baylor, and she didn’t want to be treated differently
because her father was head of medicine, so she’d wear her name tag inverted. My
second daughter, who has been incapacitated since 2003 due to a stroke, was a medical social worker before she was disabled. So two of the three went into some aspect
of medicine. My third daughter is an investment banker with Goldman Sachs. She
was in Hong Kong for three years, and she’s just moved back, so she and four of our
grandchildren are living a few blocks from us.
WCM: One day, hopefully decades from now, the New York Times will run your
obituary. What would you like it to say about your legacy to Weill Cornell?
AG: I don’t want to be remembered for what they wrote when I came, which was:
“Cornell selects cookbook author.” That’s what they pulled out of my bibliography.
So you never know with the New York Times.
WCM: You’re a cookbook author?
AG: Dr. Michael DeBakey and I wrote several books for the general public on the Living
Heart Diet.
WCM: And as to your legacy?
AG: It’s hard to do this without seeming immodest. I would like to think that I have
helped make Weill Cornell a gentler, more collaborative place, but also one that was
transformed in its academic endeavors. The legacy, to some extent, will depend on
what happens to these things—if the Belfer Research Building recruits superb medical scientists and there’s great work coming out of that. I hope that we’ll see an academic medical center in the Middle East. I hope we’ll see stronger relations with
Ithaca, Tanzania, and the Methodist Hospital in Houston—that these things will
continue to flourish. I hope that this is a place where students will want to come,
where doctors will want to practice and do research, and where patients will want
to be treated.
A
sked what was the biggest test for
leaders, the British prime minister
Harold Macmillan is said to have
replied, “Events, dear boy, events.”
Everyone knows that Tony Gotto’s service as dean
and provost catalyzed the evolution of Weill
Cornell into the wonderful institution that it is
today. But his accomplishments are all the more
impressive when one recalls that his tenure was
marked by three financial market crashes, two
recessions, innumerable political meddlings in
health care, the merger of Weill Cornell’s primary
teaching hospital into a larger health-care system,
and the tragic events of 9/11.
What is it about Tony that enabled him to navigate those turbulent times with such success? Tony
naturally induces people to want to help him and
to do the right thing for him. He invites loyalty and
excellence by being an unassuming gentleman and
exemplifying high standards. He is authentic and
true to his values as a scholar, a leader, a physician,
and a family man. In a position of great power, he
is unfailingly respectful and kind to others. It is a
truism that either autocratic or avuncular leaders
can succeed if they are consistent, because those
around them adapt. But Tony’s kind of leadership is
by far the more admirable.
H. Dirk Sostman, MD
Executive Vice Dean, Weill Cornell
Executive Vice President and CMO,
The Methodist Hospital System
D
r. Gotto’s commitment and dedication to Weill Cornell will last many
lifetimes. He was instrumental in my
appointment as dean for student
affairs and equal opportunity programs and, at the
same time, was an important figure in ensuring
that the Medical College remain diverse. From the
moment he mentioned diversity at my interview—with pride in his eyes—I knew that he was
special and that he felt Weill Cornell was special as
well. I was always supported in initiatives that my
office undertook to ensure that students were considered across every committee that would help
shape the college.
Carlyle Miller, MD ’75
Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Equal
Opportunity Programs
Assistant Professor of Medicine
•
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Discovery
Center
At a festive ceremony, Weill Cornell
dedicates the Belfer Research Building
Namesake: Robert Belfer speaks at the dedication ceremony as Congresswoman Carolyn
Maloney (on the dais) and his family (seen
on the video monitor) look on. Right: The
construction site after the unveiling of a
banner with the building’s official name.
30
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
30-33WCMspecial11researchbld_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:15 PM Page 31
By Beth Saulnier
Photographs by John Abbott
O
n a surprisingly warm and
sunny day in early November,
several hundred guests gathered
in a tent decorated with festive red banners. The
dignitaries, donors, faculty, staff, and students
had come to East 69th Street to celebrate the
latest milestone in the $650 million project: the
recognition of Robert and Renée Belfer’s $100
million gift and the dedication of the research
building that will bear their family’s name.
For more photos of the
dedication see Notebook,
which begins on page 40.
“The new medical research building will not only double the
amount of research space available [at Weill Cornell],” Robert Belfer
said in his remarks. “More importantly, as a state-of-the-art medical
research facility, it will house the newest cutting-edge equipment
needed to fully utilize breakthroughs in medical technology. We can
now see more, see more deeply, and focus and analyze data on a
scale that boggles the mind. Coupled with the brilliant scientists
already on staff and with additional ones being recruited, the building is certain to house discoveries that will benefit my family, New
Yorkers, and all mankind.”
Under construction since spring 2010, the Belfer Research
Building is the centerpiece of Weill Cornell’s $1.3 billion Discoveries
that Make a Difference Campaign and its Research Leads to Cures
Initiative. At the dedication, campaign chair Robert Appel noted
that Discoveries is nearing the finish line, with more than $1.1 billion raised thus far. “When we launched our campaign five years
ago with a goal of $1.3 billion, we thought that might be a little farreaching, particularly in the beginning of a recession,” said Appel,
vice chair of the Board of Overseers. “But we knew that if we were
successful we would make a major transformation in this institution, and more importantly bring about some major breakthroughs
in medical science. Well, the dream has become a reality.”
Located on the north side of East 69th Street between First and
York avenues, the 480,000-square-foot building will rise eighteen
stories and include such features as an indoor terrace, an airy twostory lobby, and an innovative double-paned glass curtain wall. The
building, which will have thirteen floors of research laboratories, is
scheduled to open in spring 2014. “It will be one of the hallmarks
of the twenty-first century for this medical college,” Dean Antonio
Gotto said at the ceremony. “This will be home to thirty new
researchers who will carry out discoveries that we hope will lead to
new and improved ways of diagnosing, treating, and curing disease.
These new researchers will work with the clinicians in the hospital
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Master of ceremonies: The event was also an
opportunity to honor outgoing Dean Antonio
Gotto, who announced the building’s name as
Sanford Weill and Robert Belfer observed.
across the street; they will be mentors and tutors to our medical students, fellows, and residents. So they’ll have a big impact on this
campus over the succeeding generations.”
In addition to marking the building’s dedication, the ceremony
served as an opportunity to honor Gotto, who steps down from the
deanship at the end of 2011 after fifteen years of service. “Somehow
or other we got lucky, and Tony decided to come up here from
Houston and from the chair of medicine at Baylor,” foremost benefactor and Board of Overseers chairman Sanford Weill said in his
remarks, “and we’ve had one heck of a fifteen years.” He went on to
laud Gotto—who will remain on the Weill Cornell faculty, be cochair of the Board of Overseers, and serve as a Cornell University
vice president—for his many accomplishments. They include supporting three successful campaigns raising a combined total of well
over $2 billion, attracting top students and faculty, and establishing
medical education programs in Qatar and Tanzania. Said Weill:
“Tony has taken this school from being something just on 68th
Street to really an international institution.”
T
he Discoveries campaign aims to support bench-to-bedside research in seven areas: cancer; cardiovascular disease; children’s health; global health and infectious
diseases; neurosciences; obesity, diabetes, and metabolic
disorders; and stem cell, developmental biology, reproductive, and
regenerative medicine. The new building is designed to foster collaborations, and many floors will be connected by open staircases
to encourage interdisciplinary research. The building will also
house core facilities in such areas as high-throughput cell screening, genomics, and imaging technology, as well as a tissue bank.
“While planning for this building has been years in the making,
much of the construction has taken place since my peers and I
arrived on campus a mere three years ago,” noted student overseer
Jeffrey Russ, an MD-PhD student and the event’s opening speaker.
“And just as hundreds of Weill Cornell medical students have
poured so much effort into their education to realize their potential
as future physicians and scientists, so Weill Cornell has poured so
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WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
many resources and so much dedication into
this building in order to realize our potential
as a world-class research institution.”
The Belfer Research Building is designed to
reflect the way science is conducted today:
rather than having fixed, individual labs, it will
feature adaptable spaces with workbenches that
can be easily uncoupled from utilities and relocated as scientists move around or priorities
change. The facility is intended to foster “productive collisions” among researchers from different fields—a concept that underpins the
building’s design, from the café in the lobby to
the break rooms on each floor to the terrace
out back. Such spaces are intended not only to
coax the building’s occupants out of their labs
but also to draw faculty and students from elsewhere on campus and beyond. “The building is
merely a vessel,” Starr Foundation president
Florence Davis said at the dedication, standing
in for benefactor and overseer Maurice
Greenberg, who was unable to attend. “It’s a
beautiful and functional building, to be sure.
But what we’re really excited about are the people who will fill the
building to do the sort of cutting-edge research and collaborative
translational research that has made this one of the most exciting
parts of the world to be in.”
The new building will feature design touches rarely seen in academic research facilities, such as a limestone lobby, workbenches
made of American cherry, and an urban garden with plantings, seating, and fountains. Like the nearby Weill Greenberg Center, its curtain wall will be made of “water white” glass (whose low iron
content keeps it from having a greenish hue) covered in a white
ceramic coating known as a frit. The building has many environmentally friendly features—from incorporating locally sourced
materials to collecting rainwater for irrigation to offering bicycle
storage on site—making it eligible for Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) certification at the silver or gold level.
While the building will be primarily devoted to research, it will
also enhance Weill Cornell’s educational mission, with several areas
of student space such as lounges and seminar rooms—and since
clinical research will also be conducted there, it will further the clinical mission as well. “This state-of-the-art facility will help to speed
the rate at which discoveries may be translated into advanced treatments to help people in New York, across the country, and across
the globe,” President David Skorton, MD, said at the dedication,
calling the project “a crucial milestone in the growth and development of this college of medicine, and also a milestone for Cornell
University as a whole.”
The ceremony also featured remarks from New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who called the building “a powerful catalyst for scientific discoveries that address some of today’s biggest
health challenges” and touted its benefits to the city and state. “We
are already one of the leading research centers in our country,” she
said. “It will help us cement that standing and build on it. I believe
we will be the research, high-tech, medical science center not only
for our country, but for the world.”
A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, Robert
Belfer is the former chairman of Belco Petroleum Corporation, a company that later merged with InterNorth, Inc. In 1992, Belfer founded
Belco Oil & Gas Corporation; he is currently chairman of Belfer
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Management, LLC, a private investment firm specializing in the energy, real estate, and financial
services sectors. Renée Belfer, a Vassar College alumna, is an avid philanthropist whose activities
include serving as a trustee of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and as a member of the NewYork
Weill Cornell Council. The Robert A. and Renée E.
Belfer Family Foundation supports such institutions
as the Harvard Kennedy School, Lincoln Center for
the Performing Arts, and the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute. The couple has three children—Rachelle,
Laurence, and Elizabeth—and five grandchildren.
“They’ve been involved with the Medical Center
for many years, going back to Bob’s first visit to
[professor of clinical medicine] Rees Pritchett as a
physician,” Dean Gotto said in announcing the
building’s name, “and the Belfers have supported
many different aspects of our Medical College, from
professorships to gene therapy.”
In his remarks, Belfer recalled his first visit to
the Medical College and its teaching hospital. “A little over fifty
years ago, I entered Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian as a
patient whose parents thought I was in mortal danger—but then
again, I had very loving parents,” he said, garnering a laugh.
“Happily, through the good medical skills of Dr. R. A. Rees Pritchett,
I came out of this in good shape. I was fortunate enough a month
or so later to meet my loving Renée, with whom I’ve celebrated fifty
wonderful years of marriage. Over that period of time my family’s
involvement with Weill Cornell grew and grew. My parents, my
spouse, my children and their spouses, my grandchildren, and many
of my nieces and nephews have all been patients of the doctors of
Weill Cornell. So in many ways what I’m celebrating here is recogni-
Honored guests: The audience was surrounded by bright red banners celebrating the building’s vital role in campus research.
tion of a true family-doctor relationship.”
After the ceremonial sealing of a time capsule, the dedication
culminated in the raising of a banner at the construction site
(viewed via TV screens) proclaiming the building’s name. Gotto
closed the event by inviting the audience for refreshments—deftly
including a light-hearted pitch to support Weill Cornell’s next major
construction project. “We invite you to join us for brunch in Olin
Hall gym,” he said with a smile. “And one day, at some point in the
future, we will be replacing Olin Hall.”
•
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Time capsule offers a taste of 2011
In the year 2098, a future generation of Weill Cornellians will open a container full
of history. As part of the dedication for the Belfer Research Building, the Medical
College created a time capsule—a metal box, roughly the size of a footlocker, containing artifacts from 2011. The capsule includes such items as common medical instruments
(stethoscope, tuning fork, pulse oximeter); a can of Tab (Dean Antonio Gotto’s favorite
beverage); copies of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal dated 11/9/11; lab
standards like gloves and a white coat; and the Ithaca-to-New York intercampus bus
schedule. The objects were chosen by a committee chaired by Helen Appel; members
included Robert Belfer, Joan Weill, Anita Gotto, Graduate School Dean David Hajjar,
PhD, and student overseer Jeffrey Russ. “It’s quite an eclectic accumulation of things,
and some of it may not be recognized by 2098,” said Gotto, noting that the year was
chosen because it will mark both the bicentennial of the founding of the Medical
College and the centennial of its renaming in honor of Joan and Sanford Weill.
Toward the end of the November 9 dedication ceremony, Gotto and Appel
sealed the capsule with rubber mallets—and the dean pointed out that organizers had
taken pains to insure that it will be accessible eighty-seven years in the future. “There
have been instances where people or institutions put away sealed time capsules and
then can’t find them,” he said. “But we’ll surely be able to find it, because there will
be a plaque on the wall to mark where it is.”
Closing time: Pages signed by dignitaries at the dedication were put into the time capsule just before it
was sealed.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
Persistent pathogen: Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Creative
Solutions
34
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
By Sharon Tregaskis
34-39WCMspecial11nathan_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:17 PM Page 35
I
n the summer of 1959, seven years after Selman
Waksman won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of streptomycin to treat tuberculosis, thirteen-year-old Carl
Nathan started a summer job as an assistant animal handler in the NYU lab of pathologist Lester Grant, MD,
DPhil. While Grant investigated how inflammatory signals
trigger white blood cells to adhere to the endothelial cells
lining blood vessels, the teenager cleaned rabbit cages and
cultivated a passion for scientific inquiry. Even as he commuted to Grant’s lab in lower Manhattan, Nathan fueled
his curiosity by reading biographies of such nineteenthcentury scientists as Robert Koch, who won the 1905
Nobel for revealing Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the infectious agent behind tuberculosis, and Louis Pasteur, whose
food-sterilizing treatment prevents transmission of a form
of the disease that once sickened those who drank raw
milk from Mycobacterium bovis-infected cattle.
“I was fascinated by the history of medicine,” recalls
Nathan, the R. A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology
and chairman of Weill Cornell’s Department of Microbiology
and Immunology. “I was impressed with how these giants
created the experimental structure that defines modern medicine. For them, TB was an overwhelming concern.” More
than half a century later, Nathan’s lab investigates the molecular machinery of the bacterium behind the disease in search
of new strategies to foil its infective power. In the last seven
years, he has also begun promoting new models of collaboration among scientists, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies—including pilot programs with GlaxoSmithKline,
Lilly, and Sanofi-Aventis—to bring drugs to market that combat neglected infectious diseases like TB.
Even in the years immediately following Waksman’s
streptomycin discovery, tuberculosis remained an overwhelming force both in society and in medical practice.
Everyone knew someone who had been touched by the disease. Grant—just one generation older than his apprentice—
had lost both his mother and the aunt who subsequently
raised him to the disease; during World War II, he was
excused from military service because his own bout with TB
destroyed one of his knees. Yet by the time Nathan was in
high school, public health experts were confident that,
armed with Waksman’s new antibiotic, physicians would fast
vanquish a disease that had been a cultural touchstone and
Microbiologist
Carl Nathan, MD,
is marshalling a
myriad of weapons
in the ongoing battle
against TB
the cause of one in four deaths in the U.S. and Western
Europe during the nineteenth century—including those of
Frédéric Chopin, Henry David Thoreau, and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. “The final chapter of the battle against tuberculosis appears to be at hand,” Waksman declared in his 1964
memoir, The Conquest of Tuberculosis.
By then Nathan was an undergraduate at Harvard, studying East Asian history. When his mother was diagnosed with
cancer, he resolved to expand upon his earlier training in
immunology with Grant to find a cure for the disease. He
received notice of his admission to Harvard Medical School
on the day she died, cementing his course. “I was incredibly
impressed with the power of the immune system to protect
us,” he recalls. “I wanted to bring that to bear on metastatic
cancer.” Nathan would go on to earn board certification in
oncology, ascend to the chairmanship of the National Cancer
Institute’s Tumor Immunology Committee at age thirty-three,
and then direct his focus to the mechanisms by which host
defense cells like macrophages battle cancer.
In the process, Nathan became increasingly discouraged
by the broad destruction wrought by chemotherapy and the
lack of biochemical underpinnings to inform the development of more effective, less toxic treatments. “I was frustrated with the underdeveloped state of immunology in terms of
our understanding of when cells kill, how they kill, and how
their power to kill is regulated,” he says. Answering those
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‘There are
layers of
problems that
have led major
pharmaceutical
companies to
retreat from
antibiotic
development—
but meanwhile
the ability of
microbes to
build resistance
has been picking up steam.’
36
questions demanded a shift to even more basic
research. “I became fascinated by host protective
cells and their seek-and-destroy ability. To train
them on combating cancer, I had to understand
the rules and the tools of engagement.”
But cancer—especially in humans—involves
complex processes. So in the mid-Seventies,
Nathan took an evolutionary step back, parsing
instead the settings in which our immune function evolved: defense against infectious agents.
After a decade of toggling between the worlds of
oncology and infectious disease, Nathan had
detailed some of the fundamental pathways that
regulate the ability of white blood cells like
microphages to kill pathogens, such as release of
interferon-gamma from antigen-stimulated lymphocytes, and the molecular machinery they
deploy in the process, such as production of nitric
oxide. “That,” he says, “led me to the mechanisms organisms use to protect themselves.”
B
y then it was 1986 and Nathan had
moved from Rockefeller University
to join the Weill Cornell faculty as
the Stanton Griffis Distinguished
Professor of Medicine. HIV—a catastrophic viral assault on the immune system—
was roiling New York City hospitals. The
aftershock—bacterial tuberculosis—hit just a few
years later. Its resurgence owed to a perfect storm
of biological, medical, and cultural realities.
Scientists anticipating a speedy conquest of TB
had largely abandoned research on improving
dated diagnostic techniques and treatment protocols. Likewise, public health officials had let
informational campaigns fall by the wayside. To
make matters worse, HIV was emerging as a diabolical complement to TB: among those unfortunate enough to be infected with both,
pathogenic synergy intensifies the pace and devastation of each disease. Meanwhile, due to a
confluence of regulatory, legal, and economic
forces, antibiotic development by pharmaceutical companies had stalled in favor of drugs to
treat chronic conditions such as asthma, mental
illness, and heart disease. Increasingly, strains of
Mtb were developing antibiotic resistance, yet no
new drugs were being released. In 1993, the
World Health Organization declared a global
tuberculosis epidemic—a stark contrast to
Waksman’s optimistic declaration during
Nathan’s youth.
Today, Mtb resides in one in three people
worldwide and causes another infection every
second. Four people die of tuberculosis every
minute—and over the course of a year, Mtb leads
to 1.8 million fatalities, making it the third leading cause of premature death and the leading
cause of death from a curable infection. “How
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
did we fall so far short of what Waksman thought
we were about to achieve?” Nathan mused in a
2009 commentary in Cell Host & Microbe marking
World TB Day (observed every year on March
24). “How much will the twenty-first century
resemble the nineteenth in our relationship with
TB?”
Nathan credits Lee Riley, MD, then a Weill
Cornell assistant professor investigating the
molecular pathways that Mtb uses to infect its
host, with re-igniting his interest in the disease.
It was 1990, and every weekday morning Riley
took his young children to the bus stop. As the
family waited at the corner of First Avenue and
63rd Street, Nathan would walk by en route
from Grand Central Station to the Medical
College. Riley made the most of their morning
pleasantries. “I casually said maybe we could put
together a grant proposal to work on TB and the
role of nitric oxide,” says Riley, now a professor
in the Division of Infectious Disease and
Vaccinology at the University of California,
Berkeley, School of Public Health. “The macrophages make nitric oxide, and I had this feeling
there was some relationship in how TB interacts
with these macrophages and the release of nitric
oxide.” Riley’s suggestion prompted a series of
conversations in Nathan’s office. “Lee would
drop by with his micrographs and bar graphs
and show me what he was working on,” Nathan
recalls. “He convinced me that TB is a fascinating disease.”
Think of Mtb as the tortoise of the bacterial
world—slow and steady. When it’s dividing, it
reproduces at a rate of about one division per
day and, once resident in a human host, can
remain latent for decades—encapsulated within
the macrophages meant to evict pathogens from
our bodies—before sparking an active infection
and resuming its geometric spread to new hosts.
Once active, the disease exacts its toll at a
leisurely pace, with a constellation of easily misdiagnosed symptoms including weight loss,
diminished energy, poor appetite, and a productive cough. Over the course of many months,
the patient wastes away. In the era preceding the
Industrial Revolution, the bacterium’s handiwork was often credited to vampirism; even
today, definitive diagnosis can take weeks
because of the bacterium’s plodding growth in a
test tube and the insensitivity of the microscopy
methods used to analyze sputum samples.
Humans are Mtb’s only natural host; we
transfer it via aerosolized droplets of saliva propelled into the air when an infected person
coughs or sneezes. While relatively rare in the
United States, the disease is rampant throughout
Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Worldwide, it
strikes disproportionately among the poor, for
whom the extended and expensive treatment
34-39WCMspecial11nathan_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:17 PM Page 37
regimen—a cocktail of complementary drugs
that must be taken for six to twenty-four
months—can be impossible to sustain. Incomplete or inconsistent treatment only bolsters
Mtb’s virulence, speeding the evolution of drugresistant strains and increasing the imperative
for new antibiotics.
By 1990, when he and Riley started talking,
Nathan had published more than seventy-five
articles on the genes and molecular signals that
govern the immune response. In the intervening two decades, he has deployed those insights
in a quest for clues to the biochemical processes
Mtb uses to set up housekeeping within the
macrophages, the tactics these cells use to combat active infection, and the enzymes the bacterium uses to resist our defenses.
He has also grown increasingly concerned
about the economic, legal, and scientific conditions that have converged to shift pharmaceutical research and development away from
antibacterial agents, and not just those used to
treat neglected diseases like tuberculosis that
afflict vast numbers of people in developing
countries. “There are layers of problems that
have led major pharmaceutical companies to
retreat from antibiotic development—but meanwhile the ability of microbes to build resistance
has been picking up steam,” he says, “We’ve
been emptying our anti-infective medicine chest
and not refilling it.”
To restock the cabinet, Nathan has become
convinced that scientists, policymakers, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies have to
work collaboratively to combat infectious diseases. It can take decades to progress from the
basic biochemical insights gleaned by academic
scientists through the layers of clinical trials
sponsored by a drug company and regulated by
federal law to yield a marketable drug that produces returns high enough to satisfy stockholders. It is not patent law itself but the application
of patent protection that shapes the incentives
that reward progress. To speed the development
of new weapons against TB, Nathan advocates a
more integrated approach that commends not
only an optional alternative incentive system,
but also new relationships between academics
and pharmaceutical companies, as well as
changes to the FDA’s clinical trial regulations.
He promotes the creation of public-private partnerships and open-access sectors within pharmaceutical companies to facilitate the
development of treatments with high social
value but low commercial appeal. Nature published his first thoughts on the topic in 2004. In
2007, his commentary “Aligning Pharmaceutical Innovation with Medical Need”
appeared in Nature Medicine, and in 2009, Cell
Host & Microbe published his analysis of the par-
JOHN ABBOTT
Carl Nathan, MD
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ticular challenges TB poses for pharmaceutical
companies.
In May 2011, Nathan laid out his vision for
new collaborative approaches in another commentary in Cell Host & Microbe that described
the array of emerging partnerships formed to
seek promising compounds in the fight against
pathogens, while urging readers to imagine further innovations. “Campaigns to discover antiinfectives were launched only if they could
forecast a return on investment comparable to
what could be expected from selling a product
under monopoly prices to very large numbers of
affluent or well-insured people with chronic diseases who, being helped but not cured, would
use it indefinitely,” he writes in the article’s con-
clusion. “It is no surprise that anti-infective drug
discovery nearly came to a halt. Given that a
prolonged halt will prove catastrophic, every
aspect of this depiction needs to be rethought.”
Nathan doesn’t just call for change from the
bully pulpit of peer-reviewed journals—he’s been
actively involved in multiple pilot programs
launched by firms that share his concerns.
“Pharmaceutical companies,” he says, “are using
this neglected disease as the point of the spear to
experiment with new ways of working with academics, other pharmaceutical companies, and
the nonprofit sector.” Under a grant from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Nathan has
partnered with GlaxoSmithKline’s Open Laboratory at Tres Cantos, Spain, a research and
ABBOTT
Sabine Ehrt, PhD
38
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
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development campus that hosts visiting
researchers from academia and biotech startups.
The visitors work on their own projects with a
team of GSK researchers and have access to
GSK’s compound collection, a library of 700
patents, and the drug discovery know-how of
the team. The only condition: any resulting
commercialization must be on an affordable
basis in the least developed and lowest-income
countries. “TB drug discovery is at a crossroads,”
says Nick Cammack, a senior vice president and
head of GSK’s Medicines Development Campus
for Diseases of the Developing World. “It needs
new approaches to find the drugs we need. The
field accepted that the old ways of doing things
were just not bringing us exciting molecules;
Carl is one of the first to try new approaches to
find those molecules.”
In addition to his research collaboration
with the Open Lab—he has a postdoc assigned
to the Tres Cantos campus—Nathan serves on
the project’s board of governors, which reviews
applications from scientists proposing research
at Tres Cantos. He holds a similar post as a
member of the scientific advisory committee for
the nonprofit ventures launched by Lilly and
was a member of the expert review group on TB
research priorities for the World Health
Organization’s Stop TB Partnership. “As a citizen, a parent, and a physician and scientist, I
became concerned that this was a huge problem
and felt a responsibility to solving at least the
scientific issues,” he says. “I started thinking
about how we can influence the outcome of the
battle between organisms and host defense in
ways that illustrate new approaches to finding
anti-infectives. Along the way, I’ve become fascinated by the disconnect between academia
and industry, and how walls of secrecy interfere
with the communication of ideas, lead to
redundancy, and slow industry from trying
things that might help them overcome the
roadblocks to discovery.”
M
icrobial geneticist Sabine
Ehrt, PhD, was a postdoctoral
fellow in Riley’s lab at Weill
Cornell in the mid-Nineties
and worked with him and
Nathan to isolate a novel antioxidant gene from
Mtb. On the Weill Cornell faculty since 1999,
Ehrt has continued collaborating with Nathan,
co-authoring more than a dozen papers on the
metabolic processes that sustain Mtb. Currently,
the two have a five-year grant from the NIH to
investigate how intrabacterial pH influences
Mtb’s persistence in the macrophages. With her
additional collaborator Dirk Schnappinger, PhD,
she has funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation to collaborate with pharmaceutical
companies in the search for new TB drugs. “Dr.
Nathan sets an example that collaborations
between academia and industry can be productive and fruitful,” she says.
Nathan also encourages the synergies that
can emerge when academics come together. His
team meets weekly with those of Ehrt, Schnappinger, and fellow Weill Cornell TB investigator
Kyu Rhee, MD, PhD, as well as biochemist Aihao
Ding, PhD, to form a forty-member consortium
comprising specialists in immunology, microbiology, genetics, metabolomics, and biochemistry,
among other fields. “A collaborative project is
one thing, but joint lab meetings really propel
the work forward,” says Ehrt. “Often you are
stuck in your own little world and the more
you’re willing to step out of it, the more fun and
productive research becomes. Dr. Nathan is not
shy about suggesting ideas and coming up with
experiments that might be high risk, but he proposes solutions, has very broad knowledge, and
knows the literature. He’s not restricted to tuberculosis or nitric oxide, and he applies that broad
knowledge to his own research and to our group
meetings.”
With funding from a second Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation grant, Nathan’s lab is screening a library of tens of thousands of compounds
supplied by a combination of academic and
industrial collaborators, including GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Lilly, Beijing University, the Broad Institute, the University of
Kansas, Boston University, and the Lankenau
Institute. Instead of providing the ideal conditions to promote TB’s growth in a test tube,
they’ve used insights from research by Nathan,
Ehrt, Schnappinger, and others to create conditions that mimic the hostile environment of the
human immune system. “It isn’t reasonable to
target a bacterium only when it’s in the test tube
under conditions where it doesn’t have a care in
the world, with all the oxygen, sugar, nitrogen,
vitamins, and minerals it wants,” he explains.
“It’s not like that when a pathogen is competing
in the body—that’s a tough place. The host is
already doing quite a bit to fight the infection,
and the pathogens that are most effective are the
ones that can defend themselves.”
Nathan says that his work offers multiple
non-financial rewards. In addition to the joy he
gets from solving intellectually engaging problems, his research has the potential to forge new
methods for finding anti-infective compounds,
generate insights into the basic biology of the
competition between host and pathogen—and,
most important, help the millions afflicted by
TB. Ultimately, he hopes, “we should put TB on
the list, with smallpox and polio, of diseases that
can be eradicated by modern medicine.”
‘It isn’t reasonable to target a
bacterium only
when it’s in the
test tube under
conditions
where it
doesn’t have a
care in the
world, with all
the oxygen,
sugar, nitrogen,
vitamins, and
minerals it
wants.’
•
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
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Notebook
News of Medical
College and Graduate
School Alumni
PROVIDED
Michael Alexiades, MD ’83
40
Dear fellow alumni:
As the summer of 2011 drew to a close, the weather vacillated between extreme heat and torrential
rain—but even a hurricane could not prevent your Alumni Association from welcoming the Class of
2015 at the White Coat Ceremony on August 23. All entering students were presented with coats and
stethoscopes, generously provided by the Buster Foundation and several alumni donors. This annual
event marks a rite of passage for the incoming medical students, whose interests, accomplishments, and
talents will contribute significantly to the Weill Cornell community.
We have also received word from many of our newest alumni about their adventures in the medical
world. Their days have been punctuated by hard work and long hours in their internships and residencies, demonstrating their commitment to medicine. The Alumni Association has planned
some new and innovative ways to keep our newest graduates engaged as they progress through
their training.
This year is a time of transition for the Medical College. As I’m sure you know, Laurie Glimcher,
MD, has been appointed the new Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical
College and Provost for Medical Affairs at Cornell University. The search committee evaluated
more than fifty excellent candidates before choosing Dr. Glimcher, the Irene Heinz Given Professor
of Immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School. The Alumni Association is delighted to welcome her to the Cornell family, and we
look forward to working with her in supporting the mission of the Medical College.
We thank outgoing Dean Antonio Gotto, MD, wholeheartedly for his guidance, enthusiastic
engagement of our alumni, and steadfast support of the Alumni Association. His fifteen years in
office have ensured that Weill Cornell is able to compete with the finest institutions in the world.
He will remain active as a vice president of Cornell University and co-chair of the Weill Cornell
Board of Overseers.
This fall was busy as we traveled to Boston, Houston, and Denver, visiting alumni and friends.
These events are a wonderful chance to reconnect with fellow alumni and discuss all things Weill
Cornell. Looking ahead, we are planning another regional event in San Francisco in early February
and will keep you updated as the date and venue are established. Furthermore, planning for
Reunion 2012 (October 19 and 20) is well under way. It promises to be a wonderful weekend filled
with celebrations and stimulating lectures. I look forward to seeing the extended Weill Cornell
family get together next fall.
Finally, I would like to thank you, the alumni of Weill Cornell, for your constant support of the institution and its students. In particular, your generous support of scholarships has made a medical career
possible for many students who otherwise could not afford it.
Best and warmest wishes,
Michael Alexiades, MD ’83
President, WCMC Alumni Association
alexiadesm@hss.edu
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
40-47WCMspecial11notebook_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:17 PM Page 41
1940s
Emanuel Wolinsky ’38, MD ’41: “I’m almost
94 and retired from Metro Health Hospital and
Case Western Reserve Medical School in
Cleveland, where I spent 44 years in infectious
diseases. My wife, Marjorie, and I would love to
hear from anyone in the Class of ’41.”
Francis Greenspan ’40, MD ’43: “I finally
retired after 60 years of teaching clinical research
and clinical practice of thyroidology. It was great.
I’ve moved into an excellent retirement center
with my wife, Bonnie (married 65 years), and am
very happy.”
Herbert I. McCoy, MD ’45: “I’m hanging in
there at 90-plus and engaged to be trip doctor for
a scuba group in Fiji and the Solomon Islands
next April.”
Bob Frankenfeld ’45, MD ’47: “I finally
retired two years ago after practicing internal
medicine in Long Beach, CA, for 53 years. I was
associate clinical professor of medicine at both
UCLA and UC Irvine. Four of us attended our
60th Reunion in 2008: Ernie Gosline ’45, MD ’47,
with wife Whit; Nelson Niles, MD ’47, with wife
Sofie; Carol Brach Hyman ’44, MD ’47; and me.
We were the oldest class there.”
Ernest Gosline ’45, MD ’47: “The field of psychiatry still holds my attention, but health may
soon force full retirement. I recently published a
rather bold paper called ‘Algorithm of the Mind’
based on various psychoanalytic schools of theory.
I stay in contact with Bob Harwick ’45, MD ’47,
Bob Frankenfeld ’45, MD ’47, and John Clements
’45, MD ’47. The ‘Greatest Generation’ sails
onward, but in a leaky ship.”
Ludwig G. Laufer, MD ’48: “I retired from the
practice of psychiatry, after 55 years, in November 2008 and now spend most of every day
outside working around our property that is on a
cliff on Long Island. On a clear day I can see
downtown New Haven, CT. Lots of medical problems under control. My wife, Patricia, and I love
the location—no street lights and deer on the
property.”
Rees Pritchett, MD ’48: “I gave up patient
care in June 2010, but remain on the Medical
College’s full-time staff. I do development work
and serve on several committees.”
For posterity: Rees Pritchett,
MD ’48, the Louis and
Gertrude Feil Professor of
Clinical Medicine, signs a
banner to be sealed in the
time capsule at the dedication
ceremony for the Belfer
Research Building.
JOHN ABBOTT
Edmund T. Welch, MD ’49: “Not much has
changed since my last note. I just passed my
86th birthday and am getting along well with a
cardiac pacemaker. My life now is much more
sedentary, with no more tennis. I still correspond by e-mail with Harold Evans, MD ’49, and
would welcome hearing from other classmates,
although our number now is greatly decreased.
My e-mail address is etwjdw @ yahoo.com.”
1950s
Robert C. Hafford, MD ’50: “My wife,
Audrey, passed away last April.”
Carol Remmer Angle, MD ’51: “I’m retired—
riding horses and enjoying life in Charlottesville,
VA. I live next door to my son, Fritz, an interventional radiologist at UVA.”
Roy W. Menninger, MD ’51: “I’m still in private practice of psychiatry in Topeka, KS.”
Anne Johnson Minkoff ’48, MD ’51: “I’m
‘aging in place’ in Great Neck, NY, with my husband of 53 years. We still enjoy visiting our Lake
Winnipesaukee island spot in New Hampshire,
which is now owned by our children, Ellen and
Paul. And our two grandchildren (one just graduated from Pitzer College and the other will next
May) are doing great. Their mother, our daughter, Ellen Pashall, is practicing psychiatry in
Newton, MA. Our son, Paul, is an X-ray tech at a
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
41
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Congratulations:
Cornell President
David Skorton greets
Dean Antonio Gotto
at the dais at the
Belfer Research
Building dedication.
ABBOTT
Queens hospital.”
Patrick J. Mulrow, MD ’51: “What a
wonderful life: 60 years a physician. What
fond memories of those four exciting years
as a medical student culminating in graduation and the diaspora. Our class pursued
many different disciplines. I chose an academic career and enjoyed teaching, patient
care, research, administration (20 years as
chairman of medicine), and world travel
lecturing and presenting papers at international conferences. When young students
ask my advice, I urge them to become a
physician. It’s worth the effort and expense.
What a wonderful life.”
Edward Swain, MD ’51: “I’ve been
retired since 1999 from the private practice
of psychiatry. Still physically and mentally
active in my 85th year—at least on an ageappropriate level.”
Robert Boyer, MD ’52: “I’m enjoying
retirement, including gardening, golf, and
painting. Recently had a visit from Charlie
Malone, MD ’53. I also see Allan Levy, MD
’51, and Ron Allen, MD ’54, periodically. Looking forward to our 60th Reunion next year.”
Robert Wagner, MD ’52: “Sue and I are
still holding forth at the foot of the
Bighorn Mountains in Buffalo, WY. We sure
could use a visit from classmates.”
Ginger Weeks, MD ’52: “I’m coping
with the Golden Age problems: AF, lymphedema, venous stasis ulcers, mild CHF,
hypertension, hyperuricemia, and having
been overweight. In the last three months
I’ve lost 40 pounds with diuresis (oral) and
dietary control. All my clothes have had to
be altered. I’m working six hours a week in
42
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
addiction outpatient clinics and enjoying
my friends, grandchildren, and bridge.”
Richard H. James, MD ’53: “Ginny
and I are fine for 84 and 85 years. Golf
and tennis are going OK. We have four
children, nine grandchildren, and two
great-grandchildren. Still living in Keene,
NH, in our own house.”
Peter R. Mahrer, MD ’53: “I cannot
get myself to completely retire. Still
doing teaching rounds at LAC/USC
Medical Center and tertiary care at Kaiser
Foundation Hospital in L.A.”
Allen W. Mead, MD ’53: “I survived
multiple neck fractures following a fall at
home and am married again, to Mary
Dean from McLean, VA, a 32-year
employee of the CIA.”
Bernard A. Yablin ’48, MD ’53: “Proto
magazine has asked permission to print
part of my letter on discontinuing the
practice of wearing stethoscopes around
the neck and placing them in the uniform
pocket instead.”
William H. Gordon Jr., MD ’54: “I retired
after 44 years with Kaiser Permanente in
Fontana and Riverside, CA; started nuclear
medicine at both hospitals. I live in Upland,
CA, with wife Jean. I have four children:
Stephen, a federal defense lawyer; William,
a broker; Valerie, a nurse at L.A. Children’s
Hospital; and Michele, a cosmetologist. I’m
active in the Episcopal Church and Claremont University Club.”
Ken Herd, MD ’54: “Last February, while
presenting a poster at a Gordon Research
Conference in Ventura, CA, supporting our
hypothesis that a deficiency of Gunter
Blobel’s signal peptidase accounted for the
primary pathology in cystic fibrosis (more
aptly called mucoviscidosis), I ran into the
distinguished son of one of our classmates. I
had studied this disease in 1956 with the
pathologist Dorothy Andersen, who first
described her findings in 1938. She was also
the first to describe the elevated sweat chloride levels, in 1948, later tests for which
became the diagnostic hallmark clinical finding for this condition. Dorothy cautioned
that elevated sweat chloride did not readily
explain the pathology and urged our attention to the cellular process of protein secretion then being worked out by George Palade
at the Rockefeller Institute and later clinched
by Gunter Blobel’s publication of the signal
peptide hypothesis in the 1970s. Then working in the general field of pediatric rheumatology, I did not become aware of the
importance of the existence of hydrophobic
signal peptides at the amino terminus of all
secreted proteins until the late 1980s and was
at once drawn back to the problems of sticky
secretions in mucoviscidosis. Back to
Ventura: Dr. David Erle was listed as a speaker on something to do with respiratory
mucins, great big proteins secreted into the
We want to hear from you!
Keep in touch with
your classmates.
Send your news to Chris Furst:
cf33@cornell.edu
or by mail:
Weill Cornell Medicine
401 East State Street, Suite 301
Ithaca, NY 14850
40-47WCMspecial11notebook_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:17 PM Page 43
pulmonary passages. He was at UCSF. I
recalled that our classmate with the same
last name (Henry Erle ’50, MD ’54) had two
sons, both MDs, one named David and one
named Steven (Steven Erle, MD ’86).
Indeed it was the same David Erle. We
planned to meet at the Ventura GRC, but
circumstances prevented his attendance.
Upon return from the West Coast, I charged
off to NYC hoping to have a visit with
Gunter regarding our hypothesis about the
role of his enzyme in the cause of cystic
fibrosis, but his recent convalescence from
major chest surgery prevented it, so I had
dinner with Henry and Joan in their home
in Bellaire Towers and looked down on the
old familiar East River and NYC. What a
delightful evening. If you want to recall
what Henry looked like when we all studied
together, Google David Erle from UCSF and
you will see that the photo is an incredible
likeness. Incidentally, David’s work is now
getting published in PNAS. He has already
given me some helpful pointers on mucins
and very likely could well advise about the
isolation of respiratory mucins from
patients with mucoviscidosis. But first I’ve
got to get some support. Wish me luck. I
tried to stay retired, but no success there.
Regards to all.”
Ronald Arky ’51, MD ’55: “I’m active as
teacher, clinician, and mentor. I completed
50 years on the Harvard faculty in June.
Caring for patients is still fun and gratifying.”
Reginald H. Isele, MD ’55: “I’m enjoying retirement—important activities are
quite restricted due to health problems.”
Joseph E. Johnston, MD ’55: “I’m
retired except for three nursing homes.
Traveling a lot. Enjoying life. Fifty-seven
years is long enough to practice medicine.
Everything is beautiful.”
Artemis Pazianos-Willis, MD ’55: “I
spent three weeks in July cruising the
Rhine and Mosel rivers, and ended up in
Paris for four days. Wonderful trip. I have
been retired for more than two years now
and am keeping busy. I enjoy every
minute.”
Cedric J. Priebe, Jr., MD ’55: “I’m still
working part-time for the Dept. of Surgery
at Stony Brook University Hospital, doing
quality and safety work. New e-mail address:
cedric.priebe @ sbumed.org.”
Sidney Goldstein ’52, MD ’56: “I still
have an office at Henry Ford Hospital and
show fellows and residents how to examine the heart. I’m medical editor of
Cardiology News and am involved with
numerous clinical trials.”
Robert J. Hubsmith ’52, MD ’56: “At the
hospital I continue to advise for insurance
on adverse determinations re: admissions,
length of stay, and payments. I’ve had an
active role in the Cornell Alumni Association of Northern New Jersey as treasurer
since the mid-1960s. I visit with classmates
and attend reunions less frequently.”
Ramon R. Joseph, MD ’56, is happily
retired in Sun City West, AZ. He married
Karen Moran in February 2009. He has
given up clinical practice and is now doing
pro bono work helping senior and disabled
citizens negotiate the difficulties they
encounter with Social Security and Medicare. He also enjoys his three children and
six grandchildren.
Donald P. Goldstein, MD ’57: “I’m still
working full time in gynecology at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Gave up
major surgery in 2006. Now doing mostly
ambulatory surgery and consults and running the New England Trophoblastic
Disease Center, which I founded in 1965.
Connie is very busy as a board member of
the Boston Early Music Festival, which produces Baroque operas. We continue to live
in our home of 43 years in Weston, MA.
Two grandsons are in college and another
is getting ready to go next year.”
William H. Plauth Jr., MD ’57: “I’m very
happy in Santa Fe. Pretty much staying
right there and enjoying gardening, tennis,
dog walks, and friends—in no particular
order. Would love to see my classmates.”
Robert A. Levine ’54, MD ’58: “I left
SUNY Upstate Medical University to join
Boston Medical Center as professor of medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, in the Section of Gastroenterology.
I’m working in the Liver Clinic and participating in academic activities. Barbara and I
moved to Needham, MA, where we have
two sons and four grandsons in the same
town and are closer to my son in New York
City with two granddaughters. We have a
condo in Ogunquit, ME, for summer weekends and vacations. I am publishing my
105th paper, in Hepatology. I play lots of
tennis and bike ride, too.”
Robert G. Merin, MD ’58: “We have
just moved to a continuing care community: 3500 West Chester Pike, F103, Dunwoody Village, in Newtown Square, PA
19073. So far we are enjoying it, but it’s
quite a change.”
Edward E. Wallach, MD ’58: “Hello,
everybody. I’m still working, but at a
reduced pace. Clinical responsibilities and
mentoring of students, house officers, jun-
ior faculty, and fellows consume a lot of
time. I’m also busy with clinical research
and committee work. Johns Hopkins has
been a fantastic part of my professional
life; since leaving Penn I’ve been here for
27 years. Joanne and I have gotten together with John Queenan, MD ’58, and also
spent a day at Albert Einstein with Irwin
Merkatz ’55, MD ’58. Cornell was a wonderful start to my medical life and a memorable experience.”
L. Davis Arbuckle, MD ’59: “My wife,
Julie, died in September 2010 after a long
illness.”
Bruce H. Drukker, MD ’59, and his wife,
Esther, have moved from Salem, SC, to
Spring Lake, MI. All is well and now they’re
much closer to family and old friends.
They’re also getting ready to reacquaint
themselves with “big snow.”
James E. Shepard, MD ’59: “It was
great to see former classmates at reunion
last year. It has been interesting to read and
see the various advances at the Medical
Center. One delightful surprise was discovering the little Italian restaurant at York
and 71st that has the best linguine con
vongole I have ever tasted.”
1960s
Kenneth R. Barasch, MD ’60: “I’m still
practicing ophthalmology in New York
City. No plans to retire. The 50th Reunion
was wonderful. When we all get together, it
seems as though we had seen everyone the
day before.”
Gene Sanders ’56, MD ’60: “I’ve retired
to Florida and spend time writing for a
variety of non-medical journals and magazines, especially philatelic. I was recently
voted outstanding alumnus of Frederick
(MD) High School, bringing back a multitude of fond memories.”
Carl G. Becker, MD ’61: “We are well,
still sailing on Lake Michigan, and enjoying Door County, WI. Our local politics are
insane, but nature is quite grand here. Best
to all.”
Andy Hedberg, MD ’61: “We’re looking
forward to seeing our classmates at our
50th Reunion celebration in October
2012.”
Bill Chaffee, MD ’62, will be back for
the 50th Reunion.
William R. Hazzard ’58, MD ’62: “I’m
retired at last. But what does that mean? For
me, so far, it’s a matter of philosophy and
choice. So that means refilling my plate with
things that are most likely to be fulfilling
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43
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in Lakewood, WA, managing
the produce from the garden,
and in winter enjoys a small
house atop the hill overlooking
Banderas Bay near Puerto
Vallarta. Her 90-year-old husband, Jack, is hard at work in
Washington constructing a
cruising boat in a 16-foot
Poulsbo hull, while in Mexico
he continues to refine his selfbuilt sailing trimaran. These
boats are the fourth and fifth in
his series of bluewater-sailboatsconstructed-by-Jack. “We are
both fortunate in being well,
ambulatory, and able to travel a
bit, so we are planning a trip up
the west coast of Vancouver
Island in the fall and a cruise on
the Mekong River with University of Washington alumni
next February. We recently
stopped by and enjoyed a visit
in La Jolla, CA, with Libby
Barrett Connor, MD ’60, my
Unfurled: When the name of the
roommate for two years in Olin
research building was announced,
Hall. Best wishes to all.”
a new banner was raised at the
Alfred Parisi, MD ’63: “I’m
construction site.
consulting for Unum on cardiac
disability claims and teaching
ABBOTT
at Miriam Hospital, Brown
University.”
and I would do for free (since that will generRobert S. Ennis, MD ’67: “I’m retired
ally be the case). And so far it’s all going well
from my orthopaedic surgery practice,
and as planned: teaching and mentoring as I
but I continue to teach and do part-time
wish while steadfastly resisting administraconsulting. Lorelie, my wife of 47 years,
tive re-engagement. Let’s touch base at our
and I are active in a number of philan50th next fall for updates.”
thropic organizations. There are currently
Anthony Saidy, MD ’62: “In July I spoke
four generations of the Ennis family livat the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
ing in Weston, FL—lots of celebrations.”
after a screening of Bobby Fischer Against the
John L. Marquardt, MD ’67, and his
World, in which I appear. I’ve been
wife, Betty, are living at the Ocean Reef
wrestling with Dr. M. Angell’s articles in
Club in Key Largo, FL, and enjoying the
the New York Review casting grave doubts
beautiful weather in South Florida. “Our
on psychopharmacologic practice (see
six children are all married, and we are
www.nybooks.com).”
expecting our fifteenth grandchild. We
Thomas H. Snider, MD ’62: “I’m spendhope to see you all at the 45th Reunion
ing my summers in retirement near Aspen,
in 2012.”
CO. I love San Antonio, but not nearly
George G. Telesh ’62, MD ’67: “We’re
enough when the temperature is 100
moving right along in Daytona Beach—
degrees. It takes a while for my mail to make
getting older and developing old age
it up to Aspen, but I hope this will not deter
issues, but still working full time. Keep
you from sending news and mail to my San
plugging.”
Antonio address. I sincerely desire to mainBurton C. West, MD ’67: “Katherine
tain my membership in the WCMC Alumni
and I continue to enjoy our family in
Association. Thanks very much, and my best
Knoxville (three adult children and their
to all.”
families) and visits from and to the other
Muriel King Taylor ’58, MD ’62, is haptwo adult children and their families in
pily and completely retired, painting waterNashville and Birmingham. I’m enjoying
colors and Sumi-e for fun. In summer, she’s
44
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
seeing hospital patients about every other
week, despite hassles. Aren’t contract medicine and government medicine wonderful!”
Lois J. Copeland ’64, MD ’68: “I attended the Ludwig Von Mises Institute meeting
in Vienna in mid-September, hoping it
would reach the heights of its meeting in
Spain two years ago. Important information
for these difficult times in historic places.”
Jeffrey S. Borer, MD ’69: With the
acquisition of Long Island College Hospital,
its original home in 1860, SUNY Downstate
Medical Center has enlarged its health-care
system and with it, the responsibilities of
Dr. Borer, professor and chairman of the
Dept. of Medicine and chief of the Division
of Cardiovascular Medicine. He views the
merger with LICH as a great opportunity,
both for enhanced clinical service and
heightened academic activity.
Steve Shaul, MD ’69: “I’m still practicing rheumatology in Yakima, WA.”
1970s
Peter W. Blumencranz, MD ’70, wrote a
chapter, “Molecular Analysis of Breast
Sentinel Lymph Nodes,” in Surgical Oncology
Clinics of North America, and co-authored
two major ACOSOG studies, Z0010 and
Z0011, published in JAMA on July 27, 2011,
and February 9, 2011. He is the medical
director of the Comprehensive Breast Care
Center of Tampa Bay.
Roy Nuzzo, MD ’70: “I’m still practicing
pediatric orthopaedic and reconstructive surgery at Overlook Hospital in Summit, NJ,
and at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in
Paterson, with emphasis on resident education and research at the latter. My daughter,
Aimee, son-in-law, Rob, and two grandchildren, Lily and Michael, are living close by.
We’re grateful. Jo and I are considering taking up Can-Am riding (three-wheel motorized bikes) if we don’t lose our nerve.”
Steve Rosenblatt, MD ’71: “I’m in fulltime practice of nephrology and active in
the transplant program in San Antonio, TX.
In the summertime my wife and I enjoy
hiking in Colorado. I play golf and enjoy
skiing. I’d like to have more time for travel
to family, touring, and just free time. I have
three children: Josh lives in Rockville, MD,
and is a pilot and airplane broker for business jets. He’s married to Kelley and has two
children. David lives in Austin, where he
works as a film editor; he and his wife,
Michelle, have one child and one on the
way. Lauren is a graduate engineer from
Georgia Tech and works in New York City
40-47WCMspecial11notebook_WCM redesign 11_08 12/12/11 3:18 PM Page 45
as a research coordinator; she’s applying to
medical school. The things I remember
most are some pretty rough basketball
games in the gym during exam time and
the end-of-year skits.”
Albert H. Mangold, MD ’73: “My daughter, Karen, just became a pediatric emergency attending at Children’s Memorial in
Chicago. Jean and I became grandparents
for the first time when my son, Kurt, and his
wife gave us a grandson, Charlie, in March.”
Stuart Mushlin, MD ’73, has been named
the master clinician in the Dept. of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He
is the second master clinician in all departments. Dr. Mushlin practices internal medicine and is director of preliminary residency
for the Dept. of Medicine.
Richard Tosi, MD ’73: “Based on how I
used to work, one could say I was semiretired right now. I can practice like this forever, as my internal medicine/pulmonary
career still holds great interest and professional enjoyment. Life is now less pressured
since we have paid off the college bills for
the three aliens who claim to be our children. They hit us up for Cornell once, Penn
once, and Columbia twice. Contact me at
agt200 @ gmail.com.”
Jeffrey S. Wasser, MD ’73: “I retired
from the private practice of hematology and
medical oncology in 2008 and spent the
next two years establishing a new cancer
program at a local community hospital. In
May 2011 I joined the division of hematology and medical oncology at the University
of Connecticut as an assistant professor and
medical director of the clinical trials office.”
Roger W. Geiss, MD ’75: “I’m professor
and chair of pathology at the University of
Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. For
the academic year 2010–11, I received the
student award for Best Instructor in the
Cardiovascular Course, as well as the
Faculty Outstanding Service Award.”
James Newman ’71, MD ’75, a specialist
in rheumatology, was named the first senior
vice president and executive director of the
Christiana Care Value Institute and appointed
as Christiana Care’s chief academic officer.
He previously served as Christiana Care’s
chief medical officer and chief patient safety
officer. Dr. Newman received his residency
training in internal medicine at the Hospital
of the University of Pennsylvania from 1975
to 1978 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in rheumatology at Yale University
Medical Center in 1980. He joined
Christiana Care’s medical staff that year. His
faculty appointments include lecturer in
internal medicine at Yale University
Medical Center, 1979–80, and clinical
associate in medicine, 1984–89, at the
University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine. Since 1982, he has been clinical associate professor of medicine at
Jefferson Medical College.
Karen Toskos Robertson, MD ’75:
“I’m still working and loving it after all
these years.”
Jeffrey Gold ’74, MD ’78: “My daughter Steph graduated summa from NYU. I
was named chair of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education for a twoyear term and re-elected to the AMA
Council on Medical Education and then
to the executive committee, broadly serving American medical education. I continue in my role as chancellor and executive
vice president at the University of Toledo.”
1980s
Carolyn Grosvenor, MD ’80: “I am
still a staff physician at the Albany VA.
I’m also on the faculty at the SUNY
Albany School of Public Health, where I
teach Social and Behavioral Aspects of
Public Health. I work with a local rescue
mission and am developing a health
education curriculum. My husband,
Wayne (we’ve been married 35 years),
took early retirement and is pursuing a
music career in acoustic bass with a jazz
quartet.”
Sharon A. Strong, MD ’81: “I love
working in home hospice. My husband,
Phil Bossart, MD ’81, continues at the ER
at the University of Utah. Our oldest son,
Chris, 24, started medical school this fall
at the University of Utah. Abby, 21, has
been studying in Spain for her junior
semester abroad; she traveled to Portugal,
Italy, Croatia, Switzerland, and Ghana,
and finishes up at Occidental College in
2012. Matt, 19, finished his first year at
Dartmouth.”
Douglas F. Buxton, MD ’82, is clinical
professor of ophthalmology at New York
Medical College and president of the
Jorge N. Buxton Microsurgical Education
Foundation.
Walter “Ted” Donnelly, MD ’82: “Life
is busy in the Midwest. Our oldest son,
Kevin, who would have made a brilliant
engineer, is applying to medical school.
Now I need to convince his mother that
the Upper East Side is not rampant with
muggers. Middle son Ryan is a sophomore at Ohio State in biomedical engi-
neering, and daughter Erin still wants to be a
vet. Karen and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last fall. Tempus fugit.”
Peter H. Judson, MD ’82, and his wife,
Grace Makari-Judson, MD ’82, have a son,
Timothy, entering Weill Cornell in the
Class of 2015.
Barnaby Starr, MD ’82: “I continue to
run a general pediatric practice in Baltimore. Not a day goes by that I don’t think
back fondly on my Medical College experience. The clinical skills and confidence
gained there are useful every day.”
Mary Nolan Hall, MD ’83: “I have been
promoted to deputy chief academic officer
and designated institutional officer at
Carolinas Healthcare System, a large regional
system and a designated academic medical
center with 12 academic departments and a
regional branch campus for the University
of North Carolina School of Medicine.”
Timothy Higgins, MD ’83: “I’m still
enjoying Seattle and continue to provide
pediatric and adult anesthesia. Hard to
believe that my two kids—Matt and Katie—
are now out of college. Give me a call if
you’re in town.”
Maureen Tierney, MD ’83, and her husband, John Brennan, moved with their sons
from Massachusetts to the D.C. area nine
years ago, where Maureen worked for the
FDA in the Office of Infectious Diseases and
John was a Congressional lawyer specializing in railroads. John’s knowledge got him
recruited for a terrific position with Union
Pacific Railroad. “So here we are in the true
heartland—Omaha, NE—and the boys,
John, 15, and Jim, 13, are at Creighton
Prep. I am doing some consulting and also
becoming more involved in the support
and advocacy for those with Asperger’s syndrome. Visitors most welcome.”
Scott Hayworth, MD ’84: “I’m busy in my
role as CEO of the Mount Kisco Medical
Group. We have 270 physicians in 22 locations. Finishing my stint as chair of the
American Medical Group Association and on
the ACOG board. My wife, Nan Hayworth,
MD ’85, is busy commuting between Washington and the district. She is enjoying the
challenges of being a member of Congress.
The long hours of practicing medicine have
prepared her well for her new job.”
Larry Robinson, MD ’84: “I completed
my MBA this May—a tremendous amount
of work but overall a great experience. I’ve
used this degree to become the managing
director for the research unit in our practice, but am also attempting to create a senior executive position of surgical services
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life is fun and busy. Personally, Juliet and I
just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Andrew, 15, is looking forward to
being able to drive, and Melissa, 13, enjoyed
surf camp last year. Andrew loves computers
and cars (and likes golf a bit), while Melissa
is an amazing artist, having won several
competitions. Everyone is doing well. Hope
all are well. Please visit if you’re in Tampa.”
Theresa Rohr-Kirchgraber, MD ’88, was
named executive director of the Indiana
University National Center of Excellence in
Women’s Health. She is associate professor of
clinical medicine and pediatrics and a faculty
member in the Indiana University School of
Medicine’s Division of Adolescent Medicine.
Dora Weinstein, MD ’89: “My best wishes
to all my friends and colleagues.”
ABBOTT
Celebration on 69th: Carlyle Miller, MD ’75 (center), associate dean for student affairs and
equal opportunity programs, at the Belfer Research Building dedication with medical students (from left) Matthew Sheehan, Asha Jamzadeh, Kartik Kesavabhotla, Melissa Rusli,
and José Villa-Uribe
delivery for a new four-hospital merger. I’ll
let you know how it goes.”
Michelle Goldstein-Dresner ’81, MD ’85:
“I’m a staff anesthesiologist at a surgery
center in Boca Raton, FL. My son, Shmuel,
20, is a junior at Princeton majoring in economics and is premed (go figure). Daughter
Rebecca, 19, is a sophomore, also at Princeton, majoring in molecular biology.”
Subhendu “Bob” Narayan, MD ’85:
“I’m still practicing gastroenterology in a
twenty-person GI group in Berkeley and
Walnut Creek, CA. My wife is a child psychiatrist at Kaiser. My daughter is starting
her sophomore year at Occidental College
in Los Angeles; my son is starting his junior
year in high school. Any WCMC grads out
in Northern California?”
Montgomery Douglas, MD ’86: “I am
associate professor and chair, Dept. of
Family and Community Medicine, and
associate dean for diversity and inclusion at
New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY.”
Matthew J. Kates, MD ’86: “I just
reached 20 years in practice and am a partner in ENT and Allergy Associates, a 125doctor specialty practice. My oldest starts
high school this fall. A lot has changed
since we left the Medical College!”
Randy Jacobs, MD ’87: “I’ve been a staff
physician with Kaiser of Colorado in the St.
Joseph Hospital Emergency Dept. for 16
years. We are affiliated with the Denver
46
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
Health Emergency Medicine Residency. I
enjoy the challenge of teaching residents
in our busy ED. Aside from work, I’ve
really gotten into the Colorado lifestyle;
I mountain bike all summer and ski all
winter. Right after returning to Colorado,
I got married to Jill. We have three
boys—Zak, Reed, and Max—who keep us
very busy. If anyone from the class is
ever in Colorado, give me a shout.”
Karl A. Illig, MD ’88: “After 23 years
at the University of Rochester, I have
relocated to the University of South
Florida, in Tampa, as professor of surgery
and director of the Division of Vascular
Surgery; my e-mail (and all are welcome
to contact me there) is killig @ health.
usf.com. I’ll miss Paul Rubery, MD ’88
(spine surgery in Rochester), who I operated with on a weekly basis. Professionally my career continues to be a
lot of fun. I was elected to the Vascular
Surgery Board of the ABS, and as Jeff
Gershenwald ’84, MD ’90, is also on the
Surgical Oncology Board, we have two
members of our class helping to run the
show. I’m editing a 120-chapter textbook
on thoracic outlet syndrome and run a
yearly national meeting for medical students and surgical residents interested in
vascular surgery. I’m past president of
the Peripheral Vascular Surgery Society
and serve on several SVS committees, so
1990s
Julio Lopez-Andujar, MD ’91: “I’m a primary care internist and medical director of
a private geriatric multi-specialty clinic of
CAC Florida Medical Centers in the great
weather of South Florida, where we provide
comprehensive and holistic care. I have a
great wife, Amelia, and two great children,
Sofia, 11, and Julio, 15. I enjoy traveling,
spending time with my family, and my
small private practice science lab and
library of more than 3,000 books. I study
every subject you can imagine, from
astronomy and particle physics to sociology, literature, and economics. That broad
perspective has really helped me better
understand and deal with the multiple
dimensions of my patients’ sense of wellbeing. I like working with a great, motivated team of staff and physicians. I remember
Dr. Daniel Alonso’s sincere dedication and
support for us students. I hope to hear from
Alfonso Torres ’86, MD ’90, Byron Simmons, MD ’92, and Daniel Jones ’86, MD
’90. Life is great and Weill Cornell was a
good starting experience.”
Thomas W. Shields, MD ’96: “I’m an
attending emergency department physician
at Forsyth Medical Center in WinstonSalem, NC.”
2000s
Katie Hisert, MD-PhD ’06: “I’m in the
second year of my pulmonary and critical
care medicine fellowship at the University
of Washington. In February I will return to
the lab full time to study the interactions
between the innate immune system in the
lung with bacterial pathogens.”
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In
Memoriam
’41, ’44 MD—Morton A. Beer of Morristown,
NJ, August 12, 2011; ob/gyn; chairman, Dept. of
Ob/Gyn, Morristown Memorial Hospital; clinical
assistant professor of ob/gyn, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; veteran; active in civic, community, and professional affairs.
’46 MD—Thomas C. Hill of Salisbury, MD, June
4, 2011; practiced internal medicine; chief of staff,
Peninsula Regional Medical Center; veteran;
worked on medical research that led to the safe
use of pilot ejection seats; active in community,
professional, and religious affairs.
’48, ’50 MD—Leon I. Charash of Plainview,
NY, September 14, 2011; pediatric neurologist;
associate clinical professor of pediatrics, Weill
Cornell Medical College; consultant in child neurology; veteran; chairman, medical advisory committee, Muscular Dystrophy Association; founded
a cerebral palsy center in São Paulo, Brazil;
appeared yearly on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day
Telethon; veteran; active in professional and
alumni affairs.
’44, ’50 MD—Robert H. Dickson of La
Crescenta, CA, September 10, 2011; general family
practitioner; physician at the maximum security
Tehachapi State Prison; veteran; active in community and professional affairs. Phi Delta Theta.
’50 MD—Heinz F. Eichenwald of Dallas, TX,
September 8, 2011; expert in pediatric infectious
diseases; professor emeritus and department
chairman, UT Southwestern; chief of staff,
Children’s Medical Center Dallas; chief of pediatrics, Parkland Memorial Hospital; helped
improve pediatric hospitals in Chile, Colombia,
Haiti, and Vietnam; active in professional affairs.
’51 MD—Lyle R. Smith of Kingsport, TN,
September 3, 2011; president of medical staff and
executive committee member, Holston Valley
Medical Center; taught medieval English history
at East Tennessee State University’s Kingsport
Allandale Center for Continuing Education; held
a degree in theology from the University of the
South; veteran; active in community, professional,
and religious affairs.
’47, ’51 MD—James O. Wynn Jr. of Carrboro,
NC, February 10, 2011; chief, Division of
Endocrinology, University of Arkansas Medical
Center; taught at Duke University Medical
Center; in private practice in Durham, NC; chairman, Dept. of Medicine, Durham Regional Hospital. Sigma Phi. Wife, Patricia Stroup Wynn ’50.
’52 MD—Leston L. Havens of Cambridge, MA,
July 29, 2011; professor emeritus of psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School; principal psychiatrist and
co-director of education, the Cambridge Hospital;
author; editor; active in professional affairs.
’52 MD—Russell S. Hoxsie of Wilbraham, MA,
July 30, 2011; private family physician; medical
director, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s Windemere long-term health delivery services; medical
examiner; emergency room physician; set up
the first cardiac care unit on Martha’s Vineyard;
pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme
disease; author; newspaper columnist; active in
community and professional affairs.
’52 MD—Herbert S. Sacks of New Haven,
CT, August 30, 2011; clinical professor of child
and adolescent psychiatry, Yale School of
Medicine; international medical consultant; past
president, American Psychiatric Association; volunteer faculty member, Child Study Center; proponent of confidentiality of medical records;
campaigned for group insurance coverage for
outpatient psychiatric treatment and mental
health parity in insurance coverage; supported
the “Goldwater Rule,” barring psychiatrists from
offering professional opinions about anyone
they have not personally examined; author,
Hurdles: The Admissions Dilemma in American
Higher Education; veteran; active in civic, community, professional, and alumni affairs.
’53 MD—Kenneth C. Archibald of San
Francisco, CA, August 24, 2011; specialist in
rehabilitation, California Pacific Medical Center;
professor, UCSF Medical Center and Temple
University; helped create the Archibald/
Ehrenberg Rehabilitation Terrain Park; veteran;
ski patrol member.
’49, ’53 MD—Catherine Friedrich Root of
Brainard, NY, June 27, 2011. Delta Gamma.
Husband, Harlan D. Root ’50, MD ’53.
’57 MD—Helen Carter Abel of Elizabeth, NJ,
June 25, 2011; gynecologist; active in community affairs. Husband, Robert R. Abel, MD ’56.
’55, ’59 MD—G. Billie Lerner of Washington, PA, August 4, 2011; first woman to be
chief resident at the Veterans Hospital in New
York City. Husband, William C. Lerner ’55.
’60 MD—James W. Innes of Stamford, CT,
formerly of Greenwich, CT, August 29, 2011;
practiced gastroenterology and internal medicine; taught interns and residents at Greenwich
Hospital and Yale New Haven; veteran; active in
civic, community, and professional affairs.
’64 MD—John B. Morrison of Dix Hills, NY,
September 19, 2011; co-chief, Division of
Cardiology, North Shore University Hospital;
associate professor of medicine, Weill Cornell
and NYU; served on four NIH study sections;
veteran; author; active in professional affairs.
’65 MD—Robert P. LaFiandra of Middlebury,
VT, September 3, 2011; physician; served in the
Public Health Service in Chile; master gardener;
active in community affairs.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2011
47
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Post Doc
Get Moving
Weill Cornell student group teaches disadvantaged
kids the pleasures of exercise and good nutrition
I
nner-city kids face a host of hurdles in
adopting a healthy lifestyle. There’s the
ubiquity of fast-food outlets; the dearth of
markets selling fresh fruits and vegetables
at affordable prices; the lack of safe, open
spaces to play. Those and other factors are fueling what Maura Frank, MD ’88, calls a crisis in
childhood obesity. “We know that obesity is
likely to continue into adolescence and adulthood unless there are interventions,” says
Frank, an assistant professor of pediatrics and
the director of pediatric ambulatory care at
Weill Cornell. “Because of its severe effects,
this may be the first generation of children
who live shorter lives than their parents.”
Frank is a faculty adviser to one such intervention: MAChO, a
Weill Cornell student group that aims to instill healthy habits in
kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Founded in 2009 by
Ghanaian-born medical student Nii Koney ’12, the group—whose
acronym stands for Motivating Action through Community Health
Outreach—offers year-long programs for kids aged eight through
thirteen. “Younger kids may not know things that are second
nature to us, like calories or what lean meat is,” says Diana
Mosquera ’14, a Colombia native whose Spanish fluency has been
handy in communicating with immigrant parents. “What I find
gratifying is knowing that I’m helping kids learn these things early
on. And it’s fun spending time with them—they’re really adorable.”
Each session begins with the “MAChO Super Set”: a fast-paced
series of jumping jacks, push-ups, crunches, and other calisthenics.
Then there are lessons in healthy cooking—from veggie-topped
mini-pizzas to whole-wheat pasta with broccoli and pesto—as well
as ample chances to run and play. Sometimes, the kids take field
trips to places like an Upstate New York farm, an urban greenmarket, the Sony Wonder Technology Lab, or the Tribeca Film Festival.
The program’s message is positive: the pleasures of healthy living
can rival the temptations of junk food and video games. “We don’t
say, ‘You must never eat candy,’ ” Koney says. “It’s, ‘If you’re going
to have candy, eat it in moderation; check the nutrition label,
know how much you’re taking in and what that means for your
body.’ We don’t say, ‘Never go to McDonald’s’; instead, it’s, ‘When
you go to McDonalds, you don’t have to have the hamburger—
choose the salad.’ We try to empower them to make good choices.”
Originally, the group—first named Movement Against Childhood Obesity—recruited kids who were already overweight or
obese, with BMIs above the 90th percentile. “But we moved away
48
WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
PROVIDED BY NII KONEY
Physical fitness: At MAChO, children participate in activities like
yoga to encourage healthy living.
from that,” Koney says, “to keep the program from being stigmatized as the ‘fat-kids’ camp.’ ” Besides, he says, “Our vision is to
have our participants help change things at home, in their schools,
and in their communities—and any kid can do that.”
Koney notes that MAChO is a true community effort, with
backing from a veritable village of supporters. It was started with
the help of Warria Esmond ’80, MD ’84, medical director of East
Harlem’s Settlement Health, a key venue for participant recruitment; it has been funded by such sources as the Weill Cornell
Alumni Association, the Student National Medical Association, and
the Aetna Foundation; student volunteers have come not only from
Weill Cornell but also Hunter College, Columbia, NYU, and Cornell
University’s urban semester program; and it is currently expanding
through partnership with the Boys Clubs of New York. And, says
Koney, they hope to eventually expand to other medical schools.
Involving parents is also essential to the program’s success,
Frank stresses. “You can see tremendous change if you affect even
small pieces of behavior—for example, decreasing the sugary beverages that children consume—but you have to get the whole family
on board, or it’s tough to make it work,” she says. “Younger kids are
still growing—so if you can slow the weight gain, you’ve pretty
much solved the problem.”
— Beth Saulnier
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